Novavax cuts jobs as investment capital dries up

Rockville, MD-based Novavax is cutting 18 jobs as it whittles away at costs. Like a host of other biotech companies, Novavax is reporting that it's getting harder and harder to raise new money for development work. The vaccine developer alerted the SEC that it is slashing 20 percent of its jobs in order to economize in hard times.

Despite the cuts, Novavax says it will push ahead with the development of an experimental seasonal influenza vaccine and plans to commercialize pandemic and seasonal flu products. The developer announced recently that it had harvested a promising set of data from its Phase IIa on its seasonal flu program.

"These seasonal influenza results, in combination with the pandemic influenza results released in August, give us ongoing confidence in this technology in preventing influenza," CEO Rahul Singhvi said in a statement.

Novavax reported a loss of $25 million for the nine months ended September 30. That's close to the same amount Novavax lost in the same period in 2007. It reported cash and short-term investments amounting to $45.2 million.

- read the report from the Gazette

Related Articles:
Novavax bird flu vaccine shows promise in trial
Novavax VLP technology wins kudos