Why doesn't the company pursue it for other purposes? Sounds extremely narrow, as per the comment above. There may be related stuff where it works as a treatment depending on the endpoint?
Even if this was the most altruistic, non-profit funded goal to solve an obscure ailment, once that inevitably fails - and statistically it is inevitably - all capital has been expended, your team's reputation has been spent. You go to something that has more consensus instead of your alchemy concoction nobody's ever head of and wasn't good for the one thing you made it for.