Less than a year after it was flooded with $100 million in venture capital, and just as a new trial of its energy therapy technology ramps up, Galvanize Therapeutics is now undergoing a decidedly less exciting update.
The company conducted a round of layoffs last week, CEO Jonathan Waldstreicher, M.D., confirmed in a statement sent to Fierce Medtech. The cuts are aimed at helping Galvanize “align with our strategic priorities,” according to Waldstreicher.
“I am deeply appreciative of these colleagues’ efforts, and the company is providing support for transition,” his statement continued. “Our remaining Galvanize team is focused on developing and marketing our pulsed electric field therapies for as many patients as possible, and our future remains promising.”
Endpoints was first to report the news of the layoffs.
Company representatives didn’t respond to follow-up questions about how many employees were affected by the cuts and how many remain on the roster.
Galvanize also stopped short of specifying which departments were hit by the layoffs, though LinkedIn posts from former employees suggest that they were far-reaching. Among those who posted on the social networking site was Paul Friedrichs, who had served as Galvanize’s vice president of R&D since late 2015 and who reported last week that he’d been laid off alongside “many, many good people.”
Others who reported their own layoffs on the site included firmware, research, electrical and quality engineers, R&D technicians, project managers, administrative workers and more.
Galvanize, in its current iteration, was created last year through the three-way merger of Galvanize Therapeutics, Gala Therapeutics and Galaxy Medical, all of which had been incubated by Apple Tree Partners (ATP) and were developing pulsed electric field systems that could be used to deliver drugs and treat conditions ranging from cardiac arrhythmias to COPD to solid tumors.
Their combination was accompanied by an influx of $100 million in VC funding from ATP, Intuitive Surgical, Fidelity Management and Gilmartin Capital. The series B financing was earmarked to support the continued development and commercialization of Galvanize’s flagship Aliya system, which has already received FDA clearance to conduct soft tissue ablation and is being studied as a potential aid in treating lung, breast and other forms of cancer.
More recently, Galvanize announced in mid-June that it had completed enrollment for a study of another of its energy therapy systems: the RheOx device for chronic bronchitis. The RheOx system combines an electrosurgical generator and a single-use catheter; once the catheter has been threaded through the airways of the lung, the system emits bursts of non-thermal energy that are meant to destroy the cells responsible for abnormal mucus buildups.
The trial’s results are expected to support an eventual application for premarket approval from the FDA. RheOx has so far received CE mark clearance in Europe and the FDA’s breakthrough designation in the U.S.