I was thinking the same thing last night, that this is most likely an end of year reprioritization decision at Amgen. Maybe the want to refocus on other types of immunotherapies and LM based is not one of them.
But I am surprised that such 'agreements' can be terminated so easily by one party without much financial consequence. After all, this decision could have been a one minute waving of the hand in an exec meeting but it's left ADXS in the lurch almost unable to survive. Does anyone have any idea what type of financial penalties Amgen owe ADXS as a result of this termination? Will it bring in sufficient cash to stay alive to fight another day?
More on the other category. Amgen recently announced good data from their BiTE platform at ASH, where most others were showing CAR-T data. They bought the BiTE platform for quite a bit of money a few years back so they could be doubling down on that, just look at their phase 1 pipeline. Also with a change in R&D head I’m sure there will be Some shuffling.