Shares of Praecis Pharmaceuticals Inc. jumped more than 20 percent Tuesday on news that the company was selling its Waltham, Mass.-based facility for $51.25 million.

Nearly five months after cutting more than half its staff and suspending promotion of its prostate cancer drug Plenaxis, the company continues to reduce its annual cash burn. The 180,000-square-foot building, which houses the company's corporate headquarters and research laboratory, will be sold to Boston-based Intercontinental Real Estate Corp. Praecis plans to lease back about 65,000 square feet of lab and office space within the facility to continue its development work.

The deal, expected to close by the end of the month, is intended to increase Praecis' cash position, which totaled about $48 million as of Sept. 30. The company said the sale also will help reduce operating expenses, with resources to be focused on the "most promising assets and technologies," Praecis President and CEO Kevin McLaughlin said in a press release.

Praecis anticipates realizing net proceeds of about $50.6 million. About $32 million of that is earmarked for retiring the outstanding mortgage on the facility. The remaining $19 million will go toward the company's research and development work.

Shares of Praecis (NASDAQ:PRCS) gained 22.5 percent, closing at 60 cents, up 11 cents.

The recent move did not come as a surprise. The company said in May it planned to move its operations to a smaller facility, after shrinking its work force from 182 employees to 75. Restructuring also called for Praecis to halt development of its Alzheimer's disease drug, Apan, and to suspend marketing of Plenaxis, a gonadotropin-releasing hormone antagonist cleared by the FDA in November 2003 but with a restrictive label. For example, the agency said Plenaxis should not be given to patients who are candidates for treatment with luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone agonists. Overall, those restructuring efforts were expected to cut the company's yearly burn rate to less than $30 million. (See BioWorld Today, May 23, 2005.)

Praecis plans to begin moving forward on its cancer drug, PPI-2458, which is Phase I studies in non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Last month, the company presented preclinical data at the Cambridge Healthtech Institute's Inaugural Targeted Cancer Therapies Conference held in Cambridge, Mass., that described the molecule as belonging to the fumagillin class of compounds that specifically targets the MetAP-2 enzyme. That class has been shown to prevent both abnormal cell growth and the formation of new blood vessels.