Cargo had $368 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term securities at the end of 2024. Since launching in late 2019, the biotechnology company has accumulated a deficit of some $313 million.

Cargo began 2023 with ambitious plans to develop CAR-T therapies that could help cancer patients who did not respond to other personalized cell therapies. It emerged from stealth in March of that year with $200 million in Series A funding contributed by the likes of Third Rock Ventures, Samsara BioCapital and RTW Investments.

"Given Cargo's progress to date and its experienced leadership team, Cargo is well-positioned to be first-to-market with an autologous CD22 CAR T-cell therapy," Reid Huber, a partner at Third Rock Ventures, said at the time.

Months later, in November 2023, the company priced a $281 million initial public offering that ranked among the year's largest in biotech, according to BioPharma Dive data.

Cargo followed up last July with data from a Phase 1 trial of firi-cel, which it tested in people with large B-cell lymphoma. Those data were promising enough to continue further study.

But scientists spotted safety concerns in Phase 2 testing, prompting the company to review data that showed a worrying level of severe immune reactions and waning remission rates. In response, Cargo scrapped the firi-cel program.

At the time, Chapman said the biotech would cut its staff in half and turn its research focus to other CAR-T therapies in its arsenal, such as CRG-023, which it had designed to target three proteins -- CD19, CD20 and CD22.

Now, it's shelving those too, despite having received a green light from regulators to proceed with human testing of CRG-023.

"Our priority moving forward is to maximize value for shareholders while aiming to find a permanent home for our remaining assets for the benefit of patients, and to do both in an expeditious manner," John Orwin, chair of Cargo's board, said in a statement.