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news.Altus Pharmaceuticals has announced a strategic realignment program, pursuant to which, the company will implement a workforce reduction of approximately 75%, primarily in functions related to the Trizytek program as well as certain general and administrative positions. Altus expects the majority of the realignment plan to be completed by the end of the first quarter 2009.
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To conserve capital resources, Altus will discontinue its Trizytek program activities and focus on the advancement of the company’s breakthrough, long-acting, recombinant human growth hormone candidate, ALTU-238, as a once-per-week treatment for adult and pediatric patients with growth hormone deficiency.
This discontinuation will result in the transfer of certain Trizytek intellectual property rights and regulatory filings to Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Therapeutics, the nonprofit affiliate of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, in accordance with Altus’s 2001 agreement with CFFT.
In addition, Altus is evaluating the feasibility of moving forward its early-stage clinical and pre-clinical programs and will make future decisions on these programs depending upon the availability of resources.
In connection with the restructuring, chief medical officer, Burkhard Blank; CFO, Jonathan Lieber; and, vice president, business development, John Sorvillo, will be leaving the company. Employees affected by the reduction will be offered severance benefits. Following the staff reductions, Altus will have approximately 35 employees at its headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts.
Altus expects that discontinuation of the Trizytek program will terminate the company’s exclusive sublicense to Trizytek from CFFT in North America and that CFFT will gain exclusive control of the Trizytek program and related intellectual property rights in North America.