Palatin to cut staff, cancel work on ED drug

CRANBURY, N.J. Palatin Technologies announced that it would cut its staff by 30 percent and give up on turning its lead drug bremelanotide into a successor for Pfizer’s male enhancement drug Viagra, according to published reports.

The drug is a nasal spray that works through the central nervous system, had shown promise in early clinical trials as a treatment for both male and female sexual dysfunction.

But the Food and Drug Administration interrupted the company’s plans for the drug when last summer it raised question about spikes in blood pressure resulting from use of the drug. Palatin’s partner, King Pharmaceuticals dropped plans to develop the drug shortly thereafter.

Palatin already had instituted a round of job cuts after King bowed out last fall. The latest layoffs bring the company’s work force down to 45 people, a contraction that will save approximately $3 million per year, Palatin said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company’s chief executive Carl Spana said Palatin was dropping development of bremelanotide as a sexual dysfunction drug entirely, but would refashion it as a treatment for shock due to blood loss.

Besides bremelanotide, the company is developing therapies for diabetes-related obesity in partnership with AstraZeneca. The biotech is also working on another drug to treat acute congestive heart failure and high blood pressure, plus a compound called PL-6983 that is designed to treat sexual dysfunction without bremelanotide’s blood pressure problems.