By admin 
Follow along as BioSpace keeps you up-to-date on the latest pharma and biotech layoffs.
2023 was a tough year for the biopharma industry, with several companies downsizing and restructuring their workforces to stay afloat. There are signs of recovery, as mergers and acquisitions picked up across the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry in the latter part of 2023 and have continued their upswing into 2024. Will the job market follow suit?
BioSpace will continue to be your source of news on job cuts and restructuring initiatives throughout 2024. Follow along as we keep you up to date on which companies are tightening their belts and cutting staff.
August 6
Sumitomo Pharma America is laying off 53 people in Marlborough, Mass., according to an August 1 WARN notice. The company, whose head U.S. office is in Cambridge, had already disclosed 400 U.S. layoffs in March of this year.
August 6
As it carries out a plan announced in the spring to lay off 2,200 employees this year, Bristol Myers Squibb is letting go of 117 of its staff in Lawrenceville, NJ, the company disclosed in a July WARN notice. The latest round follows other Lawrenceville layoffs in March and May of this year.
August 2
Gene therapy company uniQure is laying off 65% of its employees, a total of 300 people, including Chief Operating Officer Pierre Caloz, the company announced Thursday. The move came a month after uniQure revealed that it had agreed to sell its Lexington, Mass. manufacturing facility to Genezen; uniQure attributed the departure of Caloz and some other employees to the sale.
“[W]e’ve taken targeted measures to substantially reduce operating expenses, streamline operations, and extend cash runway,” said uniQure CEO Matt Kapusta in the announcement. “These actions are designed to ensure we have the funding required to achieve key milestones and drive shareholder value, as we endeavor to deliver transformative medicines to patients in need.”
August 2
Vir Biotechnology will lay off 25% of its workforce, eliminating approximately 140 roles across its operations, the company announced on Thursday. The reduction is part of a major shift in its research and development priorities in which the biotech will abandon its work on COVID-19 and influenza, as well as its T-cell-based viral vector platform, instead focusing on its hepatitis B and D programs and moving into the cancer space via a deal with Sanofi.
August 1
Arbutus Biopharma will lay off 40% of its staff in order to focus resources on its Phase II treatment for chronic hepatitis B infection, the company announced as part of its Q2 financial results on Thursday. “[W]e have made the difficult decision to discontinue our HBV research efforts and reduce our headcount leading to a projected cash runway into the fourth quarter of 2026,” Arbutus Interim President and CEO Michael J. McElhaugh said in the announcement.
The British Columbia–based Arbutus had 73 full-time employees as of the end of 2023, according to an SEC filing.
August 1
Boston-based HilleVax is laying off 41 employees, about 40% of its workforce, the company announced Wednesday. In its announcement, the company said the reduction “is intended to preserve cash while maintaining core capabilities as the company explores the potential for continued development” of its vaccine candidates.
HilleVax was spun out of Takeda in 2021 in order to continue development of its norovirus vaccine.
August 1
Bayer will lay off a further 70 people at its Whippany, NJ headquarters, the company revealed in a July WARN notice. The reductions will be effective at the end of October. “We are adopting a new operating model and with it, a new organizational structure,” a company spokesperson stated in an email to Fierce Pharma.
In May, Bayer announced that it had already reduced its headcount by about 1,500 in 2024, mainly by eliminating management positions. The company was surpassed only by Bristol Myers Squibb for the most layoffs in biopharma in the first five months of this year.
July
July 31
FibroGen will eliminate 75% of its U.S.-based workforce after two late-stage trials failed to meet the primary endpoint of overall survival, the company announced Wednesday. FibroGen has 475 employees globally, according to its website.
A Phase II/III trial investigated FibroGen’s experimental drug pamrevlumab in combination with gemcitabine in the first and second line in metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (mPDAC) patients, while a separate Phase III trial assessed pamrevlumab combined with gemcitabine or Folfirinox to treat pancreatic cancer.
The company is implementing an “immediate and significant” cost reduction plan to terminate the pamrevlumab program, halt any obligations to the drug, and reduce its headcount, according to the press release. FibroGen previously cut 104 employees last year after another phase III failure, according to Fierce Biotech.
July 30
Pfizer will lay off 150 employees from its facility in Sanford, NC, and 60 from its site in Rocky Mount, NC, the pharma giant disclosed in a WARN notice last week. While the WARN notice lists the layoffs as closures, the two sites will in fact remain open, a company spokesperson told Fierce Pharma. The Sanford site is involved in gene therapy programs, while the Rocky Mount facility makes sterile injectables, Fierce reports.
After a downturn in sales of its COVID products, Pfizer announced a $3.5 billion cost-cutting initiative last October, and has since implemented several rounds of layoffs. In May of this year, the company disclosed plans to cut a further $1.5 billion in costs over the next several years.
July 29
Boston-based Cue Biopharma announced on Thursday a shift in priorities that will entail laying off a quarter of its staff. The company will focus resources on its autoimmune program while seeking partners to continue development of its oncology candidates, Cue CEO Daniel Passeri said in the announcement. The realignment will extend Cue’s cash runway into mid-2025, the company said.
As of the day before the announcement, Cue had about 50 employees, Passeri told Endpoints News.
July 26
Anokion, a Switzerland- and Massachusetts-based company focused on autoimmune disease, will lay off an undisclosed number of staff, a spokesperson told Fierce Biotech. The company plans to focus resources on its lead candidate, a drug for celiac disease that is currently in Phase II.
July 26
Following a meeting with the FDA and the determination that its candidate for relapsed and refractory Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) will require an additional clinical trial, GlycoMimetics will lay off approximately 80% of its staff. The company will also undergo a strategic review on how best to move forward, it said in a Thursday announcement. The Rockville, MD–based company was notified by the Nasdaq in June that its stock price has dropped below the $1/share needed to qualify for listing on the stock market, it revealed in an SEC filing on Friday. As of the end of 2023, GlycoMimetics had 35 full-time employees.
July 26
Cambridge, Mass.–based Relay Therapeutics has laid off less than 5% of its 300-person workforce, a spokesperson told Fierce Biotech. The company, which focuses on precision oncology and genetic disease, saw the termination earlier this month of an agreement with Genentech around development and commercialization of a small molecule cancer drug. But the spokesperson told Fierce the layoff was unrelated to the dissolution of that deal.
July 24
Merck let go some 75 to 80 people this week, STAT reported Wednesday. The layoffs, which came across multiple groups, affected the company’s early research division, according to the publication.
July 22
Rapt Therapeutics will “reduce its workforce by 47 people, or approximately 40% of the Company’s existing headcount” in order to conserve cash resources, the company revealed in an SEC filing dated July 19. The South San Francisco–based biotech suffered a setback in February when the FDA placed a hold on two Phase II trials of its candidate zelnecirnon after a case of liver failure. In addition to zelnecirnon, which is being developed for asthma and atopic dermatitis, Rapt has a second clinical-stage candidate, tivumecirnon, in trials for cancer.
July 18
Aslan Pharmaceuticals is liquidating its assets and has terminated all of its employees, the Singapore-based biopharma announced Wednesday. Its directors had determined “that ASLAN SG cannot by reason of its liabilities continue its business,” according to the announcement. The company also said it had received a delisting determination from the Nasdaq on July 15 “due to its failure to meet continued listing requirements,” and that it elected not to request a hearing about the determination.
According to an SEC filing, as of the end of 2023 Aslan had 20 employees in Singapore, 14 in the U.S. and one in the U.K.
July 16
Caribou Biosciences has parted with 21 people—12% of its workforce—as it discontinues preclinical development of allogeneic CAR-NK therapies, the company reported to the SEC on Tuesday. The filing added that the layoffs will be completed by the end of the third quarter and that its cash runway will be extended into the second half of 2026 as it focuses resources on its allogeneic (or off-the-shelf) CAR T cell therapy platform.
July 12
Roche’s Spark Therapeutics is laying off staffers and halting some of its early-stage programs, Endpoints News reported Thursday. A spokesperson for the Philadelphia-based gene therapy biotech told the publication that the company is pivoting its strategy to “accelerate its pipeline and help bring more therapies to patients sooner, but this move will include ‘organizational changes.’” Notifications about employment were sent out this week, although no indication was given of how many people would be let go.
Spark has two late-stage trials in hemophilia A and hemophilia B in its pipeline and an early-stage asset for treating Pompe disease. The biotech has around 800 employees and was purchased by the Swiss pharma in 2019 for approximately $4.8 billion.
July 11
Swiss pharma Novartis has let go of 29 employees in San Diego and will eliminate approximately 100 more jobs as it winds down its development site there, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Wednesday. A company spokesperson told the outlet in an email that “a set of changes to build future capabilities and access global talent pools will be implemented over the next 2 to 3 years, with parallel build-up and reduction of roles in certain locations.”
In April, Reuters reported that Novartis was planning to cut hundreds of development jobs worldwide, including 240 in the U.S.
Correction (July his entry has been updated to state that the site affected is a development site, not a research site. BioSpace regrets the error.
July 11
Virginia-based Indivior will cease sales and marketing of its schizophrenia drug Perseris and lay off approximately 130 sales staff, the company announced Tuesday. The company, which focuses on treatments for mental illness and substance use disorder, ascribed its decision to “the highly competitive market and impending changes that are expected to intensify payor management in the treatment category in which PERSERIS participates.”
July 3
Oncology biopharma Apollomics is letting go of two members of its leadership team as well as an unspecified number of staff, the company announced Tuesday. “As a result of the updated strategic focus, and aligned with the Company’s resource needs going forward, Sanjeev Redkar, Ph.D., Company co-founder and President, and Peony Yu, M.D., Chief Medical Officer, are expected to transition to consulting roles in August,” the announcement stated, also noting the departure of “other employees.” The reductions are linked to the company’s narrowing of the target patient population for its candidate vebreltinib, currently in a Phase II clinical trial for certain tumors.
July 3
CureVac will reduce its workforce by 30% as it restructures its mRNA collaboration with GSK, the German company announced Tuesday. The two companies began collaborating on mRNA vaccines in 2020 and have candidates for seasonal influenza, COVID-19 and avian influenza in the pipeline. Under the new agreement, GSK “will assume full control of developing and manufacturing these candidate vaccines,” according to the announcement.
Meanwhile, CureVac said its reduction in force will “create a leaner, more agile organization re-focused on technology innovation, research and development” and extend its cash runway into 2028. The company employed 1,172 worldwide as of the end of 2023, according to an SEC filing, and had already shed about 150 employees through a “voluntary leaver” program in April.
July 2
Takeda will lay off a further 220 employees in Massachusetts, the company disclosed in a June 27 WARN notice. Of those, 189 people will be let go from a location in Cambridge, and 31 are being laid off in Lexington. In total, Takeda has now laid off or announced plans to lay off more than 1,300 employees so far in 2024, on top of staffing cuts it made in 2023.
A Takeda spokesperson told Endpoints in an emailed statement the company is prioritizing “increasing organizational agility, improving procurement savings, and strengthening how we leverage data, digital and technology across Takeda. . . . As we continue to work to bring these initiatives to fruition, difficult choices will also be required, and some employees will be impacted as a result.”
July 1
Waltham, Massachusetts–based Aerovate Therapeutics will lay off “nearly all of its workforce” in the coming months following the Phase IIb failure of its candidate for pulmonary arterial hypertension, the company disclosed to the SEC on June 25. Aerovate added that it has already notified 39 people—78% of its workforce—of their terminations.
July 1
Swiss biotech GeNeuro is laying off all but two of its staff members in the wake of the Phase II failure of its candidate for long COVID, the company announced Friday. GeNeuro “has made redundant 7 of its 9 employment agreements, including all of the Executive Management,” the announcement said. “All employees and managers will work through their notice periods, of up to 6 months, to execute the strategy that will be defined by the Board over the coming days.”
June
June 27
EuroAPI, a spinoff of Sanofi, will lay off approximately 550 people by 2027, the company announced Wednesday. The cuts are part of a multi-year restructuring plan that EuroAPI first made public when it unveiled its 2023 results, though few details were given at the time. According to the Wednesday announcement, the manufacturer will sell plants in Haverhill, UK, and Brindisi, Italy, leaving it with four remaining production sites. EuroAPI will also discontinue manufacturing 13 pharmaceutical ingredients.
June 25
California-based eFFECTOR Therapeutics has parted ways with its staff and will wind down operations and ask to be delisted from the NASDAQ, the company announced Monday. eFFECTOR, which was founded in 2012, reported disappointing results in April from a Phase IIb trial of its candidate for non-small cell lung cancer. But in its Q1 update, the company stated it was continuing to make progress with another anticancer candidate, zotatifin, and that its cash runway extended into the first quarter of 2025.
According to an SEC filing, eFFECTOR had 14 employees as of February 29 of this year.
June 25
Xellia Pharmaceuticals will lay off 247 employees in the U.S., most of them in Bedford, Ohio, according to a June 17 WARN notice reported by Fierce Pharma. The move by Copenhagen-based Xellia comes after the company announced the sale of its Bedford plant to generic drugmaker Hikma, Fierce notes.
June 24
G1 Therapeutics announced on Monday that it intends to make a “targeted headcount reduction” to streamline the company, but did not provide specific numbers. The layoff was disclosed as part of an announcement of results regarding G1’s drug Cosela (trilaciclib), which failed to show a statistically significant treatment effect in a Phase III trial in triple-negative breast cancer patients; the company said it will “wind down” the trial. G1 also stated that it expects its streamlining efforts to provide the company with enough of a cash runway to achieve profitability in the second half of 2025.
June 21
Ginkgo Bioworks, which announced last month that it will cut labor costs by up to 25%, has now notified the state that it plans 158 layoffs, the Boston Globe reported. A Ginkgo spokesperson told the outlet that the Boston-based company will disclose more layoffs next week, but would not say how many.
June 20
Cara Therapeutics will lay off 70% of its staff by the end of this month, the company disclosed in an SEC filing dated June 14. Just two days earlier, the biopharma firm made public the discontinuation of its candidate treatment for moderate-to-severe pruritus in notalgia paresthetica after a failed Phase 2/3 trial. The latest layoffs follow Cara’s January announcement of a workforce reduction of up to 50%. According to its LinkedIn profile, the Stamford, CT–based company has between 51–200 employees.
June 13
In what it is calling a “pipeline prioritization,” Barinthus Biotherapeutics will cut approximately 25% of its workforce, the Oxford, U.K.–based company said in a Wednesday press release. Barinthus is throwing its resources behind programs in chronic hepatitis B and celiac disease, deprioritizing a prostate cancer candidate. The company recently presented positive interim data from two ongoing Phase II trials of its hepatitis B candidate, VTP-300, at the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) Congress.
Barinthus, which is developing novel T cell immunotherapeutic candidates, has between 51 and 200 employees, according to LinkedIn.
June 12
Agilent Technologies, Inc. will lay off nearly 200 California employees effective August 9, according to a WARN notice. The cuts include 156 employees at the CDMO’s Santa Clara headquarters, seven in Santa Barbara County, 17 in San Diego County and four in Folsom. Company spokesperson Sarah Litton told SFGATE that the cuts are part of a 3% layoff “across operations and regions” and that with them, Agilent is aiming to “adjust to the pace of recovery in the market.”
Agilent reported a 5.6% decline in revenue for Q1 of this year compared to the same period last year. Prior to that, it had reported 36 California layoffs in late 2023 that became effective in January 2024.
June 6
Bristol Myers Squibb will lay off 863 employees in Lawrenceville, New Jersey over the remaining months of 2024, according to a WARN notice reported by Fierce Pharma. The pharma giant announced in April that it would implement a sweeping “strategic productivity initiative” in a bid to generate approximately $1.5 billion in cost savings through 2025, including eliminating around 2,200 jobs by the end of this year. The new disclosure of New Jersey layoffs follows a March WARN notice of 75 jobs cut in Lawrenceville.
May
May 28
Takeda will undergo more layoffs, with 641 workers in Massachusetts set to get the ax, according to Endpoints News. A company spokesperson told Endpoints that the bulk of the layoffs will be in Cambridge, with 495, while 146 positions will also be eliminated in Lexington. Layoffs will begin in July and continue until March 2025. Takeda announced that it is undertaking a restructuring of over $900 million and has already committed to closing an R&D facility in San Diego, which employs more than 300 people. The Japanese pharma currently employs 36,893 people, according to LinkedIn, of which more than 18,000 are in the U.S.
May 22
Germany-based Evotec is closing a gene therapy–focused site in Austria, affecting 40 staff members, the company announced Wednesday. The move marks Evotec’s exit from the gene therapy space, which it had entered in April 2020, Endpoints News noted.
May 22
Lyra Therapeutics is laying off 87 employees—75% of its workforce—following disappointing Phase III results for its implant to treat chronic rhinosinusitis, the company said Tuesday. Its announcement added that Lyra “has stopped manufacturing and commercialization efforts and seeks to sublease its facilities to significantly reduce the Company’s operating costs.” The Massachusetts-based biotech said that the cuts extend its cash runway into 2026.
May 22
Takeda is shuttering an R&D hub in San Diego that employs 324 people, according to a May 9 WARN notice. The layoffs, part of a broader restructuring by the global company, will take effect in July. The San Diego Union-Tribune noted that some of the affected employees will be offered jobs at Takeda’s offices in Massachusetts. It added that the San Diego facility concentrated on gastroenterology, inflammation and neuroscience.
May 21
Citing “efficiency gains,” Exscientia is laying off 20–25% of its workforce, the company announced Tuesday. Based in the U.K., Exscientia was founded in 2012 on the promise of using AI to automate drug discovery and design. According to its most recent annual report, it had an “average headcount” of 501 employees in 2023. Tuesday’s announcement said the reduction in force will extend Exscientia’s cash runway into 2027.
May 20
Industry lobbying group Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) has kicked off a restructuring initiative that will see the termination of 30 employees, according to exclusive reporting by STAT News.
Citing four sources, STAT noted that the layoffs will affect senior leaders at BIO including CSO Cartier Esham, Chief Policy Officer John Murphy and Chief Public Affairs and Marketing Officer Rich Masters, who confirmed to the publication that he would be leaving the group.
May 17
San Diego–based Erasca will reduce its headcount by about 18% as it drops several pipeline programs, the oncology company announced Friday. Concurrently, it is licensing two candidates from Chinese companies for development in the U.S. and other markets.
As of the end of February, Erasca had 126 full-time employees.
May 14
BioMarin Pharmaceutical is laying off approximately 170 employees globally, the company said in an SEC filing. According to the filing, most affected employees were informed on May 14, and the layoffs will be completed by the end of July. Endpoints News notes that the move comes on the heels of BioMarin’s announcement last month that it will cut several of its pipeline programs.
May 14