CuraGen to Make Cost Cutting Announcement by January 03

NEW YORK, Oct. 9-CuraGen plans to make an announcement regarding cash flow and expenditures early next year, investor relations and corporate communications director Mark Vincent said at the UBS Warburg global life sciences conference here today.

The company, which has roughly three to four years worth of operating cash at a burn rate of $80 million to $100 million annually, is "looking for ways to conserve money," Vincent said. To raise new cash now, he added, is "a bit of a challenge."

Does that mean big layoffs for the genomics tool and drug discovery company?

"We haven't publicly said," Vincent told GenomeWeb. "That's a last resort."

CuraGen, like many other genomics companies, is making efforts to move further downstream into drug development, and hopes to file its first INDduring the first half of next year. The company has had success in developing a predictive toxicogenomics screen for Bayer, winning a $3 million milestone payment earlier this year, and plans to use this platform as the basis for other collaborations while it simultaneously works to develop its preclinical compounds toward becoming attractive lures for partnerships.

But in the meantime, said Vincent, "we're being stringent with assessing costs."