A company leading the push to cash in on reprogrammed stem cells has fired much of its management team.

According to Xconomy, the board of San Francisco, California based iPierian fired its CEO, Mike Venuti, its chief technical officer, as well as executives in charge of finance, business development, and intellectual property last month. The company did not make an official announcement, but its website reflects the reshuffle.

The company hopes to develop induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell lines as models of disease for use in screening drugs. Created by reprogramming a person’s skin cells into a pluripotent state, iPS cells can be differentiated into other cell types where the defects that underlie a particular disease might manifest themselves.

So far, iPierian has created iPS cell lines from patients with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, type 2 diabetes, spinal muscular atrophy and other conditions. In January, Venuti told Nature that he hoped the drugs the company is developing for spinal muscular atrophy would reach clinical trials within a couple years. But the company’s main business plan has been to license disease models made with iPS cells to other pharmaceutical companies.

According to Xconomy, iPierian’s board wasn’t happy with the company’s strategy under Venuti. John Walker, who preceded Venuti as CEO and does not sit on the company’s board, told the news site that iPierian plans to cut the number of scientific programmes it is working on, reduce spending and seek to be acquired.

Venuti’s replacement is Peter Van Vlasselaer, former CEO of Palo Alto, California based Arresto Biosciences, which is developing drugs against cancer and a fatal lung disease and was bought by Gilead last year.