Company: KROS
Filing Date: 2025-02-26
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001664710-25-000018
Chunk: 290

Company: Keros Therapeutics, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-02-26
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 290
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 the services of our key personnel and any of our other executive officers, key employees, and scientific and medical advisors, and our inability to find suitable replacements, could result in delays in our research and development objectives and harm our business. 

Recruiting and retaining qualified employees, consultants and advisors for our business, including scientific and technical personnel, also will be critical to our success. Competition for skilled personnel is intense and the turnover rate can be high. 

80

We may not be able to attract and retain personnel on acceptable terms given the competition among numerous pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and academic institutions for skilled individuals. In addition, failure to succeed in preclinical studies, clinical trials or applications for marketing approval may make it more challenging to recruit and retain qualified personnel. The inability to recruit, or the loss of services of certain executives, key employees, consultants or advisors, may impede the progress of our research, development and commercialization objectives and have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects. 

We will need to grow the size of our organization, and we may experience difficulties in managing this growth. 

As of December 31, 2024, we had 169 full-time employees, including 135 employees engaged in research and development and 34 employees engaged in management or general and administrative activities. As our clinical development and commercialization plans and strategies develop, we expect we will need additional managerial, operational, sales, marketing, financial, legal and other personnel. Future growth would impose significant added responsibilities on members of management, including: 

▪identifying, recruiting, integrating, maintaining and motivating additional employees; 

▪managing our development efforts effectively, including the clinical and FDA review process for cibotercept, KER-065, elritercept and any future product candidates, while complying with our contractual obligations to contractors and other third parties; and 

▪improving our operational, financial and management controls, reporting systems and procedures. 

Our future financial performance and our ability to commercialize cibotercept, KER-065, elritercept and any other product candidates we develop will depend, in part, on our ability to effectively manage any future growth, and our management may also have to divert a disproportionate amount of its attention away from day-to-day activities in order to devote a substantial amount of time to managing these growth activities. 

We currently rely, and for the foreseeable future will continue to rely, in substantial part on certain independent organizations, advisors and consultants to