There are not many options remaining for La Jolla Pharmaceutical, (NASDAQ: [[ticker:LJPC]]) which last week reported the failure of its Riquent drug candidate for treating lupus.
In a brief statement, CEO Deirdre Gillespie said Riquent was the San Diego biotech’s sole significant asset. The company says it is taking steps to reduce costs, “including a substantial reduction in personnel.”
La Jolla provided no details about the extent of the job cuts, but it reported having 86 full-time employees a year ago, according to its annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company did not immediately respond to an e-mailed request for clarification about the cuts this morning.
The company had $26 million in cash left at the end of September, and received $15 million last month through a partnership with Novato, CA-based BioMarin Pharmaceuticals. It is now evaluating strategic options to maximize the value of its assets, “such as winding down the business or the sale of the Company,” according to the statement.
La Jolla’s stock collapsed on Feb. 12, falling more than 90 percent after the Riquent failure. The stock traded this morning at 9 cents.
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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