PixarBio Slashed Headcount, Evicted from Medford Headquarters
August 1, 2017
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
MEDFORD, Mass. – Beleaguered PixarBio Corporation has abruptly slashed its workforce by half and moved its operations from Massachusetts to New Hampshire. The company revealed its moves in a July filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The company said it was forced to move due to the property owners it was leasing space from evicting it following late payment of rent. In its filing, PixarBio did not specify how late the rent was, but noted that it was paying $23,341 per month for its sites in Medford. The company also leased space in Woburn, Mass. Both spaces were owned by Cummings Properties. After failing to make its rent payments on time, PixarBio said Cummings “commenced dispossess proceedings.” As a result, PixarBio found adequate space in New Hampshire at the greatly reduced price of $3,003 per month.
In addition to the shifting of its operations, PixarBio said in the filing that since the end of December, the company has reduced its number of employees by more than half. In December, the company employed 27, but now PixarBio has 10 full-time employees and one part-time employee, the company said in its filing.
PixarBio is developing non-opioid-based pain treatments. On its website, the company said its NeuroRelease treatment, NR-14, is expected to treat post-surgical pain for a period of time longer than four days. The company said it anticipates taking the NeuroRelease platform to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in late 2018 and anticipates a ruling in 2019.
“Going forward our patent focus is on pain, spinal cord injury and epilepsy and we have discontinued filing Parkinson’s disease patents but we keep the value of the knowledge learned as trade secrets,” the company said in the SEC filing.
All of this is occurring while the company is under investigation from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
In January, the company sought to acquire Cambridge, Mass.-based InVivo Therapeutics for less than $77 million. However, later in the month the company said it was withdrawing its offer in order to focus on developing its NeuroRelease Pain platform. The same day the company announced it was no longer seeking to acquire InVivo, the SEC halted trading of PixarBio stock over concerns of stock manipulation. Additionally, the SEC called into question some assertions made by the company in public documents, including “business combinations and current shareholders,” “he identity and qualifications of key shareholders and employees” and the company’s development efforts. The halt in trading and the company’s abrupt about-face sparked a lawsuit filed by some PixarBio investors who claimed the company violated federal securities laws.