Boston, Massachusetts, USA
October 12, 2022
GreenLight Biosciences (Nasdaq: GRNA), a public benefit corporation striving to bring effective and safe solutions to make food clean and affordable for everyone and dedicated to developing health solutions for every person on our planet, today announced a realignment to focus on key near-term value drivers and extend its cash runway.
Key changes include further optimizing GreenLight’s organizational structure to better serve the company’s operations and more efficiently support the research, development and commercialization of its plant health and human health pipelines, primarily by integrating GreenLight’s platform team into the respective teams for human health and plant health. These integrations come with a staff reduction of approximately 25%.
In recent months, GreenLight’s human health team announced manufacturing mRNA at scale with Samsung Biologics and launched partnerships to develop vaccines with the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health and with Serum Institute of India.
The plant health team has demonstrated first-of-a-kind field control of fungal pathogens such as Powdery Mildew, with effectiveness on a par with chemical standards. The team has also progressed work to develop RNA seed treatments, partnering with Germains Seed Technology. Field trials of GreenLight’s proprietary pollinator solution to protect honeybees showed control of varroa destructor mite similar or superior to a leading chemical alternative after 12 weeks.
“Our goals, ambition and mission remain unchanged as we hone the focus of our work to current market conditions,” said Andrey Zarur, CEO of GreenLight. “The integration and streamlining of teams will help extend our runway and allow us to better focus on our near-term value drivers for human health and plant health.”
For plant health, we continue to work on broadening the pipeline, which includes fungicides and insecticides. There will be particular emphasis on advancing registration and commercialization of the first-ever foliar-applied RNA for crop protection, Calantha™, GreenLight’s solution for control of the Colorado potato beetle. We will also continue towards regulatory submission of GreenLight’s solution targeting varroa mites, which are decimating honeybee colonies around the globe.
For human health, our ongoing focus remains on obtaining proof of concept of GreenLight’s technology platform with our Covid vaccine and advancing our shingles program in collaboration with Serum Institute of India. Following on the Covid and Shingles work, GreenLight plans to continue to work on research programs addressing unmet medical needs in lower and middle income countries.
As a result of this realignment, GreenLight will shift its focus from early-stage research programs—including our gene therapy program for sickle cell disease and our programs for antibody therapy and supra-seasonal flu—to opportunities that are nearer to commercialization. We are also reorganizing our operations in order to maximize the efficiency of our team, which we expect will reduce our facilities and other SG&A costs over time. The reductions in headcount are expected to generate savings of approximately $13 million in direct employee costs in 2023. In addition, we expect there will be savings from other direct and indirect cost areas.
“This realignment comes following a range of cost cutting measures instituted earlier this year and will help us better position GreenLight for longer-term growth,” said Andrey Zarur, CEO of GreenLight. “For me, personally, it is heartbreaking to say goodbye to such incredibly talented and valued colleagues and we sincerely appreciate their dedication and contributions to GreenLight.”
About GreenLight Biosciences
GreenLight Biosciences (Nasdaq: GRNA) aims to address some of the world’s biggest problems by delivering on the full potential of RNA for human health and agriculture. Our RNA platform allows us to research, design, and manufacture for human, animal, and plant health. In human health, this includes messenger RNA vaccines and therapeutics. In agriculture, this includes RNA to protect honeybees and a range of crops. The Company’s platform is protected by numerous patents. GreenLight’s human health product candidates are in the pre-clinical stage, and its product candidates for the agriculture market are in the early stages of development or regulatory review.
Topics
Species
