Biomea Fusion is following through on a New Year’s resolution to become a metabolic-focused company. The Bay Area biotech has dropped a phase 1 leukemia candidate and laid off 35% of staff to focus development on diabetes and obesity assets, the company announced in a May 5 release.
The shifts come as part of a strategic realignment meant to cut costs and extend the company’s runway into the final quarter of 2025, according to the release.
As part of the new strategy, Biomea is also consolidating its remaining workforce at a San Carlos, California, site—called the Biomea Innovation Lab Center—by May 31. The status of Biomea’s headquarters in neighboring Redwood City was not immediately clear.
As of publication, Biomea had not responded to questions from Fierce Biotech.
The dropped leukemia asset is BMF-500, an oral FLT3 inhibitor currently in a phase 1 dose-escalation and dose-expansion trial. After a planned data readout in the second quarter of 2025, the company said the asset discontinuation “concludes its oncology efforts." Biomea is seeking a strategic partnership for the candidate, according to the release.
With BMF-500 out the door, Biomea is homing in on lead asset icovamenib, a menin inhibitor designed to address the underlying causes of diabetes. Icovamenib is currently in a pair of phase 2 trials, one in Type 1 diabetes and another in Type 2 diabetes.
Icovamenib showed some signs of efficacy at the end of 2024, reducing patients’ blood glucose levels in the Type 2 diabetes trial. This result came after a brief interruption when Biomea revised the trial’s protocol after a clinical hold from the FDA over liver toxicity concerns.
Biomea’s other remaining asset is a preclinical GLP-1 receptor agonist known as BMF-650. The biotech is currently running BMF-650 through investigational new drug-enabling tests and hopes to begin the first human studies in the second half of this year, according to the release.
The biotech first unveiled plans to become a diabetes and obesity medicines company during the 2025 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in January, with icovamenib and BMF-650 deemed “the cornerstones of the metabolic franchise.”