Adecto, Aviceda wind down, as Caribou seeks options

There's a fairly buoyant operating environment in the US biotech sector at the moment, fuelled by an improving financing climate, but not all companies are thriving.

Adecto reaches a dead end

It's already a terminal situation for Adecto Pharma, set up in 2014 by researchers at Tufts University, which has ceased trading, according to a social media post by chief executive Nora Mineva.

The Boston-based biotech was developing targeted cancer therapies and companion diagnostics aimed at aggressive, immunotherapy-resistant solid tumours that express the cell surface protein ADAM8, but after 12 years of operations, its lead development programme – antibody-based AD100 – remained in preclinical development. It was funded entirely from grants and prize money, and never completed a financing round.

In a social media post, chief executive Nora Mineva blamed the demise of Adecto on "a risk-averse fundraising environment that is hesitant to back new therapeutic targets without clinical data," and said that the company "simply ran out of financial runway."

The company has filed a patent on AD100 – the antibody will also be featured in a forthcoming scientific paper – and is "actively exploring pathways to advance its development," she added.

Aviceda joins the off-ramp

Meanwhile, just across the Charles River from Adecto in Cambridge, Aviceda Therapeutics has also started winding down its operations, according to an Endpoints report that cited an employee social media post.

The decision follows the failed phase 2b SIGLEC trial of AVD-104 in the eye disorder geographic atrophy (GA) secondary to age-related macular degeneration (AMD). The intravitreal sialic acid-coated nanoparticle is designed to reset overactive microglial and macrophage cells from a destructive to a healing state and inhibit complement-mediated inflammation.

Aviceda – which was set up in 2018 and raised an impressive $207.5 million in a third-round financing in early 2025 – blamed imbalances in baseline lesion characteristics between the patient groups for the poor result, and suggested it would still pursue a phase 3 programme for AVD-104.

That was the last official announcement from the company, however, and there's no word yet on any plans to sell off its assets or intellectual property.

Caribou tries to stay on the road

At the other end of the US, Caribou Biosciences is also in trouble, having decided to discontinue developing its two CAR-T therapies, CD19-targeted vispacabtagene regedleucel (vispa-cel) for the treatment of B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma and BCMA-directed CB-011 for multiple myeloma and seek the dreaded "strategic alternatives." The two allogeneic CAR-Ts are the only candidates listed in its pipeline.

Berkeley, California-based Caribou, a specialist in CRISPR genome editing that is listed on the Nasdaq, saw its shares plummet by more than a third after the announcement, which also pointed to another round of workforce cuts – leaving it with a skeleton staff – and a cost-saving drive. Caribou ended the second quarter with less than $114 million in cash.

"Unfortunately, despite the progress we've made, the current financing environment for allogeneic CAR-T cell therapies has made it increasingly challenging to secure the capital necessary to responsibly advance these programmes," said Caribou's CEO, Rachel Haurwitz.

Photo by Fahim Junaid on Unsplash