Company: ABUS
Filing Date: 2025-05-14
Form Type: 10-Q
Source: 0001447028-25-000099
Chunk: 64

Company: Arbutus Biopharma Corp
Filing Date: 2025-05-14
Form: 10-Q
Item: Part I, Item 2
Chunk 64
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 our efforts on advancing the clinical development of imdusiran and AB-101, and therefore ceased all discovery efforts, discontinued our IM-PROVE III clinical trial and reduced our workforce by 40%.  In the first quarter of 2025, we announced the appointment of five new members of our Board of Directors (our Board) to replace all of the former directors, as well as the appointment of a new President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairperson of our Board and a new Chief Financial Officer. Additionally, our Board took action to reduce our workforce by an additional 57% resulting in a total workforce after reductions of 19 employees. Our Board also decided to exit our corporate headquarters in Warminster, Pennsylvania and to discontinue in-house scientific research. In connection with these actions, we incurred a one-time restructuring charge in the first quarter of 2025 of $12.4 million. With these organizational changes and our ongoing cost management efforts, we expect to significantly reduce our net cash burn in 2025 when compared to 2024. 

Strategy

Our strategy is focused on maximizing opportunities for our cHBV development programs and our in-house developed LNP delivery technology.

LNP delivery technology

On February 28, 2022 and April 4, 2023, we filed patent infringement lawsuits in the United States against Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, respectively, seeking compensation for their unlicensed use of our patented technologies in their COVID-19 mRNA-LNP vaccines. It is well established in the scientific literature that the most significant technological hurdle to developing and deploying medicines using mRNA is engineering a safe and effective way to deliver the mRNA to human cells. Scientists at Arbutus and Genevant have spent years developing and refining LNP delivery technology, which has been licensed for various applications to many different third parties. Our and Genevant’s LNP technology relies on microscopic particles built from four carefully selected types of fat-like molecules to shelter and protect ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecules. With this technology, the RNA can travel through the human body to a target cell and through the target cell’s membrane before releasing the RNA. Without this crucial delivery technology, the RNA would quickly degrade in the body and be ineffective. We remain committed to taking all legal actions necessary to defend and protect our intellectual property.

With respect to the Moderna lawsuit in the United States, the claim construction hearing occurred on February 8, 2024. On April 3, 2024, the court provided its claim construction