Mersana Therapeutics provides strategic reprioritization, financial update

“As an organization driven by a mission to discover and develop potentially life-changing ADCs for patients fighting cancer, UPLIFT’s outcome is clearly disappointing and requires us to reprioritize our areas of focus,” said Anna Protopapas, President and Chief Executive Officer of Mersana Therapeutics. “In recent years, Mersana has advanced new product candidates and developed new partnerships utilizing its next-generation ADC platforms, Dolasynthen and Immunosynthen. These will be our primary focus moving forward. We plan to complete the dose escalation portion of our Phase 1 clinical trial of XMT-1660 in 2023 and initiate the dose expansion portion of the trial in 2024. Our team continues working diligently to address the clinical hold on the Phase 1 clinical trial of XMT-2056. Additionally, we intend to strongly support Mersana’s collaborators as they leverage our next-generation ADC platforms and advance their product candidates. “We also are taking decisive action to extend our cash runway and ensure we have the resources to evaluate the clinical potential of our next-generation ADC product candidates,” Ms. Protopapas continued. “Unfortunately, this necessitates reducing our workforce by approximately 50%. A very talented group of employees who helped to build Mersana will be departing as a result of this strategic reprioritization. We are grateful for their many contributions and intend to provide strong support through their transition.” Mersana’s restructuring plan includes a wind-down of UpRi-related development activities, including its UP-NEXT and UPGRADE-A clinical trials and the company’s regulatory and commercial readiness efforts. If analyses of data enable the identification of a path forward for UpRi, the company will consider strategic alternatives for the asset, including partnering.