Sweden-based BioInvent International has decided to focus its operations with the aim of achieving self-financing of the business before external costs for future new clinical studies. Its development of proprietary antibody drugs will concentrate primarily on developing new cancer drugs, resulting in a clear indication focus. The company currently has five agreements with major companies based on products from the antibody library, n-CoDeR. It will increase the efforts to create new n‑CoDeR agreements for clinical programs and continue to develop existing partnerships.

As part of this focus, BioInvent plans to reduce the number of full-time employees by 20, in addition to the 21-employee reduction announced in July. For 2012, the number of full-time employees will have been reduced from 89 to 48. Following the changes, 39 full-time employees will work in R&D.

Svein Mathisen, president and CEO of BioInvent, said, “We are moving from being active in a number of medical areas to focusing primarily on cancer, such as BI‑505, currently in clinical phase I, for the treatment of multiple myeloma, and on two new drug candidates for which preclinical development is expected to start with toxicology studies next year. We intend to partner our programs at an early stage.”

“We see good opportunities to increase revenues from our external programs, thereby achieving a significant increase in the self-financing of our operations,” he continued. “As the drug candidates from our partnerships advance through clinical development, BioInvent will receive milestone payments. We expect clinical studies of at least two product candidates from existing partnerships to start as early as next year. We regret the fact that the changes in our organization will impact our employees. However, we are convinced that focusing the business will strengthen the company and our long-term development.”