Despite having clinical trials underway for its cancer pipeline, Cue Biopharma disclosed that it will pause its work in oncology to instead focus on its preclinical autoimmune disease candidates. The strategic shift triggered a round of layoffs that will affect about 25% of the biotech’s staff.The organisational changes are expected to reduce Cue’s expenses by about a quarter and provide the firm with runway into mid-2025. The company is also on the hunt for partnerships to further streamline its operations, reduce costs, and support its oncology candidates.Packed pipelineCue’s clinical suite includes Phase I trials of IL-2-based biologics CUE-101 and CUE-102. The former is being tested both as monotherapy and in combination with checkpoint inhibitor Keytruda (pembrolizumab) for HPV16-driven head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, and the latter is being assessed for late-stage colorectal, gastric, pancreatic and ovarian cancers that express WT1.“We intend to preserve the potential value of our clinical oncology programmes by retaining requisite clinical capabilities to enable maturation of clinical survival data in the current ongoing Phase I trials,” CEO Daniel Passeri said.According to the company’s website, it has three preclinical autoimmune disease candidates lined up. The most advanced is CUE-401, which is being developed in collaboration with Ono Pharmaceutical to selectively differentiate and expand induced regulatory immune T cells (Tregs) in a patient’s body. The next programme is CUE-501, a bispecific that depletes autoreactive B cells.“I believe each of these autoimmune programmes has the potential to address multiple diseases and create near-term and intermediate value creation opportunities,” Passeri commented. The third project Cue is working on is the CUE-300 series of biologics, which are intended to selectively inhibit autoreactive T cells by delivering inhibitory signals, and/or boost the activation and expansion of Tregs to control aberrant T cell activation.
