Evidently in the mood for some spring cleaning, Salt Lake City’s Recursion is clearing out a chunk of its pipeline as it narrows its focus on R&D in oncology and rare diseases.
The move comes roughly six months after Recursion acquired fellow AI drug discovery outfit Exscientia in a deal that closed in November.
All told, Recursion is “deprioritizing” three clinical-stage programs, pausing another and winding down a single preclinical program in an undisclosed target, the company revealed in its first-quarter financial results Monday. The biotech said it will specifically look to either discontinue the programs or pass them on via partnerships.
With those programs cleared out, Recursion will move forward with six active development projects. Four of those are in cancer, while the other two cover potential rare disease indications.
“Rare disease and oncology indications have been our consistent focus for a while, and this strategic prioritization is a disciplined way of continuing on high-impact opportunities across these therapeutic areas,” Recursion’s co-founder and CEO, Chris Gibson, Ph.D., said in an interview with industry publication Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.
Taking a closer look at the pipeline casualties, Recursion is deprioritizing clinical-stage programs REC-2282, REC-994 and REC-3964, which the company was developing in neurofibromatosis type 2, cerebral cavernous malformation (CCM) and C. difficile infection, respectively.
In the case of the first two projects, Recursion noted that the totality of data on the ‘2282 and ‘994 programs support discontinuing the studies outright. As for REC-3964 in C. difficile, Recursion says it’s weighing whether to pursue out-licensing opportunities for the asset.
Back in September, Recursion posted phase 2 data on REC-994 in CCM—a rare disease marked by lesions that increase the risk of seizure, stroke and neurological deficits—that validated the candidate’s safety profile but failed to wow on efficacy.
In the 62-patient trial, Recursion observed a similar safety and tolerability profile between REC-994 and placebo over 12 months of treatment, which allowed the study to meet its primary endpoint. On the efficacy front, however, Recursion simply noted that MRI scans showed a “trend towards reduced lesion volume and hemosiderin ring size” at a higher dose of REC-994 compared to placebo.
The company noted no improvements on patient-reported outcomes or physician-led measures at the study’s 12-month mark. At the time, Recursion stood behind its molecule and said it planned to discuss an additional trial with the FDA.
Meanwhile, in early February, Recursion issued additional data from the trial, which found that 50% of patients on the 400-mg dose of REC-994 demonstrated a reduction in total lesion volume compared to 28% in the trial’s control arm.
Nevertheless, long-term extension results have ultimately shown “no promising trends in MRI or functional outcomes in the placebo-to-400mg crossover, and the 400mg-to-400mg arm did not continue prior trends and was indistinguishable from natural history,” Recursion said of the pipeline cull in its press release.
“Given our portfolio strategy and our data-driven approach, without a definitive signal, we did not think it prudent to go forward,” Gibson added during his interview with GEN.
Recursion’s pipeline shuffle follows the company’s acquisition of AI development peer Exscientia late last year.
When Recursion announced the deal in August, the biotech said the combined company would enter the fold with 10 clinical readouts expected over the next year and a half. The combined firm came out the gate sporting 10 partnered programs with the potential to generate more than $20 billion in milestone payments following potential approvals.
Those collaborations continued to pay off for Recursion in the first quarter, with the company noting that it has received a $7 million milestone from French Pharma Sanofi after using its platform to identify an oral small molecule against a “high-interest immune cell target.”
The Sanofi pact was originally penned by Exscientia in 2022 and covers the discovery of up to 15 small molecules in oncology and immunology leveraging the biotech’s AI-based platform.
Aside from the programs being scrapped or potentially partnered, Recursion is also pausing work on REC-4539—being developed for reversibility and central nervous system penetration in solid tumors—as it works to “ensure a competitive Target Product Profile.”
"As part of our business combination with Exscientia, we are proactively streamlining our portfolio, platform, and operations, making deliberate tradeoffs to focus resources on programs with the strongest scientific rationale and the highest potential for near- and long-term impact,” Recursion’s chief R&D and commercial officer, Najat Khan, said in a statement.
The programs the company is continuing to actively pursue cover a range of indications including advanced solid tumors, biomarker-enriched solid tumors and lymphoma, B-cell malignancies, breast cancer and rare diseases familial adenomatous polyposis and hypophosphatasia.
At the end of March, Recursion had roughly $509 million in cash on hand compared to $603 million at the end of December. The company’s total revenue for the first three months of 2025 came in at $15 million, $1 million more than it generated during the same period in 2024, which Recursion attributed to the timing of projects with Sanofi, Roche and Germany’s Merck KGaA.