Although halting one clinical program, modifying another and axing 40 percent of its staff wasn't exactly the way Endocyte Inc. hoped to make its entrance at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting in Chicago, those were precisely the steps the company took to "put patients first," according to CEO Mike Sherman. The company's reduction in force and termination of programs for EC-1456 and EC-1169 in taxane-naïve patients affect the company's capacity to execute but not its capabilities, Sherman told BioWorld Today.