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Black Diamond Therapeutics Restructures Workforce, Deprioritizes RAF Program

NEW YORK – Black Diamond Therapeutics on Monday said it is restructuring its workforce, deprioritizing development of its RAF-targeted drug BDTX-4933, and focusing resources on advancing its lead candidate, the EGFR inhibitor BDTX-1535.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based firm said it has taken steps to optimize its operations, which include a reduction in staff, but it did not disclose how many employees were affected. Black Diamond said it will retain its core drug development and management expertise. In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, Black Diamond said Fang Ni, its chief business officer, chief financial officer, and principal financial officer, and Elizabeth Montgomery, its chief people officer, will leave the company. The firm has appointed Erika Jones, its senior VP of finance and principal accounting officer, as principal financial officer.

For the deprioritized BDTX-4933 program, the company said it is actively seeking partnerships to move that asset forward.

For BDTX-1535, Black Diamond has Phase II clinical trials underway in frontline EGFR-mutated non-small cell lung cancer and in the recurrent setting. The company said it will share data from both of these trials in Q1 2025 and carve out a registrational path for the drug in the recurrent setting with feedback from the US Food and Drug Administration.

Black Diamond previously underwent a restructuring in 2022. At that time, it laid off 30 percent of its workforce and ended development of its ErbB inhibitor BDTX-189. Later that year, the firm spun off an early-stage precision oncology firm, called Launchpad Therapeutics, and transferred to it some undisclosed preclinical programs.

By reducing its workforce again and deprioritizing development of BDTX-4933, Black Diamond said it should be able to fund operations into Q2 2026.