NEW YORK – Nautilus Biotechnology said Thursday that it is once again pushing back the projected launch date for its proteome platform, this time to late 2026.
The Seattle-based company also said that on Wednesday it laid off 16 percent of its staff in an effort to extend its cash runway.
During a conference call following the release of the company's Q4 2024 financial results, Chief Scientist Parag Mallick said that the delay stems from a need to optimize elements of its platform's surface chemistry and assay conditions in order to improve the performance of the semi-specific probes used by the system to identify proteins.
Nautilus' technology uses chips functionalized with DNA origami structures that allow researchers to deposit single proteins in extremely dense arrays, enabling single-molecule analysis of as many as 10 billion individual proteins. The company analyzes the arrayed proteins by iteratively staining the sample with semi-specific probes and then using machine learning to identify individual proteins based on the patterns of probe binding observed.
The company has had difficulty producing these probes, and Mallick said that, as of the start of 2025, many of its candidate probes "were not meeting the [desired] performance target."
"In an effort to decrease the fallout rate, in Q1 we focused on a number of new development work streams related to our labeling approaches, assay buffers, and surface chemistry," he said. "The data from those experiments have made clear the need for us to optimize some elements of our surface chemistry and assay conditions in order to achieve better alignment between our probes and our assay in a way that will increase our confidence that a significant number of our existing and to-be-developed labeled probe candidates can become platform ready."
Mallick said that testing the optimizations and making any required platform modifications will require more time than previously anticipated.
Nautilus has pushed back its timelines several times since launching. The company initially said it aimed to measure 2,500 proteins per run by early 2022, to measure up to 10,000 proteins per run by late 2022, and to analyze full proteomes by the middle of 2023. In 2022, it pushed a planned 2023 launch to mid-2024. In August 2023, it announced that while it continued to target mid-2024 for its launch, it was scaling back the specifications for the initial version of the platform. At the beginning of 2024, it again pushed back the launch timeline, this time to 2025. In October, CEO Sujal Patel said the company hoped to launch the platform in late 2025, though he said the launch could be pushed to 2026.
Patel said Thursday that this week's layoffs were made necessary by the most recent delay in the company's launch plans. He said that Nautilus now expects its cash runway to last through 2027.
Patel said the company still expects its platform to sell for around $1 million at launch. He said cost per sample could start at around a few thousand dollars and then decline over time.
Nautilus also continues to work on targeted applications of its technology. The company has presented data on the use of its technology for profiling proteoforms of the Alzheimer's disease-associated protein tau. Patel said Nautilus plans to continue this work while also expanding to look at other biomarkers of interest, and does not plan to offer a targeted version of the system as either an instrument or a service. Instead, he said, it will provide access to targeted analyses via partnerships and collaborations "for the foreseeable future."
For Q4 2024, Nautilus reported a net loss of $17.6 million, or $.14 per share, compared to a net loss of $17.0 million, or $.14 per share, in the same quarter a year ago.
The company's Q4 R&D spending was $12.8 million, up 2 percent from $12.5 million a year ago, while its general and administrative costs fell 4 percent to $7.2 million from $7.5 million.
Nautilus recorded a full-year net loss of $70.8 million, or $.56 per share, compared to a net loss of $63.7 million, or $.51 per share, in 2023.
The company's 2024 R&D spending rose 7 percent to $50.5 million from $47.3 million a year earlier, while its general and administrative costs also rose 7 percent to $31.0 million from $28.9 million.
Nautilus finished the year with $27.6 million in cash and cash equivalents and $102.2 million in short-term investments.
In mid-morning trading on the Nasdaq, shares of the company were down 20 percent at $1.15.