Bristol Myers outlines ‘about 12’ pipeline cuts as it executes major cutbacks

As part of its sweeping $1.5 billion cost-cutting measure, Bristol Myers Squibb is culling “about 12” programs from its pipeline, CMO Samit Hirawat said Thursday morning.

The programs will either be discontinued or externalized as Bristol Myers slashes costs company-wide in Chris Boerner’s first major move as chief executive. Thursday’s announcement also included about 2,200 job cuts, representing approximately 6% of its global workforce.

David Elkins

With the pipeline changes, Bristol Myers is seeking to prioritize medicines with the highest potential return on investment, CFO David Elkins said. “We will disproportionately invest in higher-return opportunities, which improves our portfolio ROI and strengthens our growth profile in the second half of the decade,” he said.

Some of the experimental drugs involved include an anti-CTLA-4 program, an anti-SIRPα antibody and a BET inhibitor, Hirawat said. He also indicated BMS may continue to reorganize its pipeline later this year. “Overall it’s a continuum,” Hirawat said.

The company’s stock price $BMY was down more than 8% in early Thursday trading.

BMS looked at several factors in deciding where to halt drug development, Hirawat said, including whether the company thought a program’s data could beat existing medicines or other drugs in development, whether a program would be a potential growth driver and whether a Bristol Myers program could be “first-in-class” or “best-in-class.”

Samit Hirawat

The anti-CTLA-4 and anti-SIRPα programs were discontinued due to the existing treatment landscape, with Hirawat saying the investigational anti-CTLA-4 probably couldn’t beat Yervoy. The BET inhibitor (BMS-986158) was scrapped because, while it had shown good data, it “does not meet the threshold” to be a growth driver, he said.

Overall, Bristol Myers removed eight programs from Phase 1 development and six from Phase 2, according to an Endpoints News review of its fourth-quarter 2023 and first-quarter 2024 presentations. The company also added five programs to Phase 1, while advancing two drugs from Phase 1 to Phase 2 and one from Phase 1 to Phase 3.

Two programs from its recent acquisitions of Karuna and RayzeBio were also added to Phase 3 development.