Celularity Warns of Potential Layoffs in Strategic Review
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Celularity announced Thursday it was conducting a strategic review and warned its workforce to brace for potential layoffs.
Company officials said they're hopeful layoffs won't be necessary amid the restructuring.
Robert J. Hariri, CEO of Celularity, explained the reason behind the warning.
“As we invest to scale production of our commercial biomaterial products to meet expected demand in the United States and the Middle East, we are prioritizing our most promising cell therapy product candidates and programs and are rebalancing our workforce and identifying targeted expense reductions to support these priorities,” Hariri said.
To soften the blow, Celularity highlighted the places it's excelling, emphasizing its growing degenerative disease program. In particular, this includes therapeutic candidates for Crohn’s Disease and Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy.
Earlier this month, the Crohn’s Disease therapeutic showed a clinically meaningful and durable benefit for up to two years, according to data analyzed from three legacy Phase I, Phase Ib/2a and Phase Ib studies.
The legacy placental-derived mesenchymal-like adherent stomal cell therapy demonstrated a clinical response rate of 83% in patients dosed after two years in a Phase I study.
Celularity plans to investigate a next-generation placental-derived MLASC therapy in FSHD.
The company is also prioritizing opportunities in osteoarthritis and plans to investigate its placental extracellular matrix product candidate in a model of the disease.
Beyond its progress in degenerative diseases, Celularity’s strategic review also prioritized expense reductions to align operating priorities in advance of an anticipated biomaterials production ramp-up this year.
This follows its Jan. 11 announcement that detailed a territory distribution agreement with CH Trading Group for the Middle East. As part of the deal, CH Trading Group will act as the exclusive territories distributor of Celularity’s Halal-Certified products within more than 100 countries.