Almost three weeks after announcing its lead drug Elocalcitol, a vitamin D3 analog, failed in a Phase 2b trial for overactive bladder, Italy’s BioXell is axing 14 employees. Of course, most of the employees out the door will be from the Elo’ program.

In our last post, we speculated that the axe would swing after CEO Francesco Sinigaglia said the company’s short term objective would be to “focus spending very carefully and ensure strict cost control.”

BioXell also said it intends to focus on developing its monoclonal antibody BXL1H5 for the treatment of chronic pain. The antibody, still in preclinical development, is expected to enter the clinical phase in the first half of 2011.

Good luck with another difficult disease area that is difficult to develop a drug in, hardly an unmet medical need, an exceedingly crowded market, and comes with a high placebo response.

Our advice: take the $57.3M in cash you have, give the rest of the employees a nice severance (plus help with job placement) and give the remainder back to shareholders. Just call it a day, guys.

Image from foxnews

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