SiliconBeat

Poor Genitope. On Monday it announced it had halted development of its experimental MyVax treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after the Food and Drug Administration said at least one more clinical trial was needed. Its CEO Dan Denney called the costs of further clinical development “prohibitive at this time.”

It’s shares lost 60 percent of their already reduced value the next day, closing at 23 cents. They fell 79 percent last year.

Genitope also said Monday it would postpone a special meeting of its stockholders that was to take place Tuesday to Friday. The company is asking shareholders permission to potentially dilute their holding in the future by nearly doubling the number of shares it could issue from 65 million to 125 million.

The company said it could use some of the additional stock to raise funds and to oppose any hostile takeover bids by establishing a “poison pill” that would give certain shareholders the right to acquire more shares at a low price.

The proposal passed Friday. (We left voice-mail and e-mail messages asking the company about the vote results, but have yet to get a response.)

On Thursday, the company said in a press release that it got a letter from the Nasdaq market warning that its shares could be delisted because one of its independent directors, Stanford Finney, had resigned from the board’s audit committee.

And in a Friday filing, the company notified the SEC that Finney tendered his resignation from the board March 12, two days before, “for personal reasons” effective immediately.

Finney, who heads up the brokerage firm Spyglass Trading, evidently left the audit committee once before in February 2007 and rejoined it last June to fill in for a departing director. He joined the board in 2003.

Genitope shares recovered some by the end of the week, closing at 28 cents. A published report in the San Francisco Business Times Friday said the company would cut jobs and seek approval for MyVax “overseas.”