After forming from a merger hashed out over plates of tacos about a year ago, nChroma Bio is laying off staff and deprioritizing the research spearheaded by one of its founding companies.
“NChroma Bio made the difficult decision to reorganize, which resulted in the reduction of staff,” a company spokesperson told Fierce Biotech.
The company is making the changes in order to focus its efforts on lead hepatitis asset CRMA-1001, which the Boston biotech hopes to launch into the clinic early next year.
“As we approach these upcoming major clinical milestones, we re-prioritized our efforts to optimize our runway to ensure we achieve these while also investing in promising preclinical research programs," the spokesperson said.
NChroma’s research efforts will now center around epigenetic silencing, the science underlying CRMA-1001. CRMA-1001 originally came from Chroma Medicine, which merged with Nvelop Therapeutics in December 2024 to form nChroma.
CRMA-1001 is delivered using lipid nanoparticles, while Nvelop contributed engineered viruslike particles (VLPs) to the new company. NChroma originally planned to pursue VLPs for non-liver indications; that work is now on the back burner.
“We are committed to advancing additional epigenetic silencing programs with broad applications including cardiovascular disease and CNS,” the spokesperson said. “While promising, we have paused other areas of research, as we seek alternative funding sources to advance those technologies.”
NChroma declined to share details on the number of employees affected by the layoffs or the total number of staffers still employed by the company.
The idea for nChroma arose during a meal at Bartaco, a restaurant near Chroma’s offices, then-Nvelop CEO Jeff Walsh told Fierce in December 2024. Walsh was dining with Chroma CEO Catherine Stehman-Breen, M.D., whom he has known for years, when they realized the two companies could team up to innovate new in vivo delivery methods for genetic medicines.
Over the following 10 weeks, the details of the merger were ironed out, and the companies raised $75 million to support their combined venture.
The companies consolidated into Chroma’s offices, with Walsh taking the CEO role while Stehman-Breen became an advisor to the company. Stehman-Breen is not included among nChroma’s advisors on the biotech’s website, and she is now a venture partner at F-Prime Capital, one of nChroma’s investors. An undisclosed number of employees from both companies were laid off as part of the merger.
NChroma shared preclinical data for CRMA-1001 at the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases’ annual conference on Nov. 7. The compound is designed to modify the physical structure of the hepatitis virus’s DNA in order to silence its genome.
“We believe that CRMA-1001 has the potential to be a best-in-class therapy delivering a potential functional cure for hepatitis B patients worldwide,” the nChroma spokesperson said.