Layoff Tracker: BioNTech Cuts 63 Employees, Closes Maryland Cell Therapy Site

2024 was a tough year for the biopharma industry, with several companies including Bayer, Bristol Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson cutting hundreds or even thousands of employees.

BioSpace will continue to be your source of news on job cuts and restructuring initiatives throughout 2025. Follow along as we keep you up to date on which companies are tightening their belts and cutting staff.

To see which biopharmas laid off employees in the years prior to 2025, check out our 2023 and 2024 articles.

Know about a layoff happening in biopharma? Feel free to contact Angela Gabriel at angela.gabriel@biospace.com.

BioNTech
June 20

In conjunction with its decision to discontinue a study for one of its CAR T candidates, BioNTech will close down a cell therapy facility in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and lay off 63 employees at the site, according to a June 13 WARN notice and reporting from Fierce Pharma on Thursday.

Citing a company spokesperson, Fierce noted that BioNTech will no longer develop its anti-CLDN6 CAR T therapy BNT211 for testicular cancer and germ cell tumors. The company will push through with BTN211 studies in patients with relapsed or refractory solid tumors carrying the CLDN6 marker, the spokesperson said.

The layoffs, which will take effect Aug. 9, come shortly after two big business development milestones for BioNTech. Earlier this month, the German company secured a potential $11 billion contract with Bristol Myers Squibb to partner on a bispecific molecule for solid tumors. The payment includes a $1.5 billion upfront consideration and $2 billion in noncontingent commitments. Milestones could reach up to $7.6 billion.

Then last week, BioNTech bought out its one-time COVID-19 competitor CureVac for a $1.25 billion all-stock deal. The deal is cancer-focused and will advance CureVac’s pipeline of early mRNA-based immunotherapies, anchored by the glioblastoma program CVGB.

Lycia Therapeutics
June 18

Lycia Therapeutics is parting ways with 23 employees, one of the laid-off staff told BioSpace via email on Tuesday. As of writing, there has been no WARN notice for these layoffs, nor has the San Francisco-based biotech released any official statement on the matter.

BioSpace has also reached out to Lycia to confirm the layoffs but has yet to hear back. It remains unclear which roles will be affected, when the layoffs will take effect and why the company is lowering its headcount.

Lycia is a young biotech building out its proprietary LYTAC platform for targeted protein degraders. The company has yet to enter the clinic: Its two most mature assets—LCA-0061 and LCA-0321, for allergic indications and Graves’ disease, respectively—are undergoing IND-enabling studies. In May of last year, Lycia brought in $106.6 million in Series C funds to help push its lead candidates into the clinic.

It is unclear how many employees Lycia has, but its LinkedIn page lists 52 associated members.

Prothena
June 17

Weeks after announcing it was discontinuing development of birtamimab after the anti-amyloid antibody missed the primary endpoint in a Phase III trial, Prothena disclosed it’s laying off 91 employees in Brisbane, California. The cuts are effective Aug. 1, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notice.

Prothena had 163 employees as of Dec. 31, according to an annual report, meaning the layoffs could affect around 56% of its workforce.

In its May announcement about the Phase III trial stumble, the Dublin, Ireland–based biotech shared that birtamimab had failed to significantly improve time to all-cause mortality in patients with AL amyloidosis. Prothena also noted it was looking to cut costs, which would include a “substantial workforce reduction.”

The company reported a net loss of $60.2 million during the first quarter, compared to a $72.2 million loss during Q1 2024. Prothena had $418.8 million in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash as of March 31, 2025.

Scorpion Therapeutics
June 17

Scorpion Therapeutics laid off “certain staffers” before spinning out preclinical assets to Boston-based Antares Therapeutics, Fierce Biotech reported. Former Scorpion CEO and now Antares CEO Adam Friedman told Fierce that although Antares kept most of the Scorpion team together, some workers had gone to Eli Lilly as part of Scorpion’s sale to Lilly of its lead PI3Kα program. After the deal, he added, the company had to “right size the organization,” especially in clinical development.

Before the spinout, Fierce reported Scorpion had about 150 employees. Antares now has about 100, according to the report.

Lilly in January announced the acquisition of Scorpion’s PI3Kα inhibitor program. Antares launched June 10. The biotech is developing precision medicines for cancer and other serious diseases. Scorpion’s former leadership team is leading Antares.

Gilead Sciences
June 16

Gilead Sciences cut 36 employees in Oceanside, California, effective Aug. 15, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notice. The location supports clinical manufacturing and process development for the Foster City, California–based pharma and subsidiary Kite Pharma.

Fierce Biotech reported that a Gilead spokesperson put the workforce reduction in the context of a decision to co-locate the biologics development and manufacturing teams with their counterparts in R&D. That move, the spokesperson told Fierce, includes transitioning most of the biologics roles from Oceanside to Foster City.

The cuts are the second known layoffs this year for the company, which let go of 149 people in Foster City effective May 27, according to a WARN notice in late March. That workforce reduction affected scientific and technical services staff.

ImmunityBio
June 16

A few months after trimming its California workforce, ImmunityBio is making a small cut to its Woburn, Massachusetts, site. The San Diego–based biotech is letting go of three employees at that location, effective from July 29 to Aug. 12, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notice.

ImmunityBio let go of 10 employees in California at the start of the year, the immunotherapy and cell therapy company disclosed in WARN notices in late January. That workforce reduction affected nine people in El Segundo and one in Culver City, with all cuts effective March 25.

ADC Therapeutics
June 13

To cut costs and help extend its cash runway into 2028, ADC Therapeutics is laying off about 30% of its global workforce, closing its U.K. research facility and trimming its pipeline, the company announced June 12. The Switzerland-based biotech had 265 employees as of Dec. 31, according to its annual report, meaning the layoffs could affect around 80 employees.

At the end of last year, most of ADC’s staff—133 people—worked remotely, while 53 people were at its New Providence, New Jersey, office; 55 were at its U.K. research facility in London; and 24 were at its Lausanne, Switzerland, headquarters. The company did not identify which locations are affected by the layoffs. ADC expects to mostly complete the cuts by Sept. 30, according to the announcement.

In addition to the layoffs and London facility closure, the biotech is discontinuing early development efforts for preclinical programs in solid tumors with the exception of its exatecan-based ADC that targets prostate-specific membrane antigen. This is the company’s second pipeline shift in the second quarter. In May, ADC announced it had discontinued its ADCT-602 trial in patients with relapsed or refractory B-cell lymphoblastic leukemia based on Phase I/II data. At that time, the company expected its cash runway to extend into the second half of 2026.

In ADC’s June 12 announcement, ADC shared that a $100 million private investment in public equity (PIPE) deal expected to close June 16 should help extend its runway into 2028. The biotech plans to use the net proceeds in part to fund multiple catalysts primarily in support of clinical development and commercialization activities for Zynlonta. The CD19-directed antibody-drug conjugate has FDA and European Medicines Agency approval for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma after two or more lines of systemic therapy.

Third Harmonic Bio
June 13

Four months after cutting 50% of its staff as it prepared to push oral wild-type KIT inhibitor THB335 into Phase II development, Third Harmonic Bio announced it will shut down. The San Francisco–based biotech’s stockholders approved its liquidation and dissolution plan, proposed in April, on June 5.

The closure will affect not only Third Harmonic’s San Francisco headquarters but also its Cambridge, Massachusetts, office. The company had 31 employees as of March 31, according to its most recent quarterly report, where it divulged a net loss of $15.8 million for the first quarter and an accumulated deficit of $175.5 million.

In its June 12 announcement, Third Harmonic said it has initiated the sale of THB335, intended to treat chronic spontaneous urticaria. The biotech also noted it expects to distribute between $5.30 and $5.35 per share of common stock to stockholders during the third quarter. Third Harmonic did not state an official end date for the business, which was developing therapeutics to treat dermal, respiratory and gastrointestinal diseases.

At the time of the February layoffs, Third Harmonic shared it was suspending all research and development work not related to THB335 and weighing its options to “maximize shareholder value.” Two months later, in mid-April, it announced the proposed liquidation and dissolution plan. A week after that, it disclosed in an SEC filing that it had parted ways with Chief Scientific Officer Christopher Dinsmore, who stepped down from his role April 21 and received severance benefits.

Genentech
June 12

After enduring multiple rounds of layoffs last year, Genentech’s employees are facing more uncertainty as the Roche unit lets go of 143 workers at its headquarters in South San Francisco, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notice.

The layoffs, originally reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, will go into effect on July 14, as stated in the WARN notice. The company framed the downsizing as just business as usual.

“As part of our ongoing commitment to innovation and operational efficiency, we continuously review and adapt our business in line with customer and patient needs,” Gententech’s parent company Roche said in a statement to the Chronicle. “Regular reviews of our strategy and operating model ensure we deliver on our commitments.”

The move comes after a year of shifting priorities and investments for Genentech. In April 2024, the company pledged to reduce its workforce by 3% across multiple departments, affecting more than 400 people. A few months later, in August 2024, Genentech shuttered its entire cancer immunology group amid a reorganization of oncology research, then followed that news by laying off 93 employees at the South San Francisco headquarters.

For more details, read the article.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals
June 12

Just months after shelving its cell therapy–device combo for type 1 diabetes, Vertex Pharmaceuticals is parting ways with 140 employees, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification letter dated June 6.

The layoffs will heavily focus on the company’s Rhode Island operations, where 125 employees will be affected, as per the state’s WARN posting. There, Vertex is consolidating its three Providence sites, which currently form somewhat of an “integrated campus” in the city, into just one location, as per the WARN letter. “We presently expect this action to be permanent,” wrote Camilo Cobos, the biotech’s vice president of human resources.

Citing a company spokesperson, The Providence Journal reported that the layoffs are connected to the discontinuation of Vertex’s diabetes therapy, dubbed VX-264. “Certain roles related specifically to the VX-264 program have been eliminated,” the spokesperson told the publication.

Vertex discontinued the development of its diabetes drug–device combo VX-264 in March after underwhelming Phase I/II data that showed the cell-device combo was safe but unable to significantly increase C-peptide levels during a mixed-meal tolerance test, suggesting that it could not sufficiently boost insulin production. The company absorbed a $400 million impairment charge in connection with the discontinuation.

For more details, read the article.

Recursion Pharmaceuticals
June 11

Recursion Pharmaceuticals will lay off roughly 20% of its workforce, affecting some 160 employees, in a bid to extend its cash runway.

In an SEC filing on June 10, the Utah-based biotech announced that it was conducting a “reduction in personnel and infrastructure” as part of an ongoing push to streamline its strategy. The move, Recursion added, would cost around $11 million in one-time charges, primarily related to severance payments and benefits, but would allow the company to stay afloat into the fourth quarter of 2027.

Excluding these severance expenses and partnership inflows, Recursion now expects its cash burn this year to be lower than $450 million, further dropping to less than $390 million in 2026, as per its SEC filing.

Recursion revealed last month in its Q1 business report that it had slid further into the red, with a net loss of $203 million in the first quarter, versus $91.4 million during the same period last year. As of March 31, 2025, the company had $509 million in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash. Recursion had over 800 employees at the end of 2024, as per its annual report.

For more details, read the article.

National Resilience
June 10

The once-hot biomanufacturing start-up National Resilience has decided to “wind down” operations at a number of its sites. The company confirmed to Fierce Pharma on Tuesday that it is shuttering six of 10 manufacturing sites it owns, three in Massachusetts, two in California and one in Florida. The company did not reveal the number of employees affected by the move.

“Importantly, Resilience and our go-forward manufacturing operations, anchored by our Cincinnati facility, are fully operational” company president and CEO William Marth said in a statement to customers on Monday.

The company’s investors have provided $250 million in “bridge financing” to support consolidation of its operations, according to Marth’s note.

National Resilence launched in 2020 and racked up more than $1 billion in various fundraising rounds and loans, but this year the company has fallen on harder times. On Jan 9, it laid off 120 employees at its Research Triangle Park facility.

Capsida Biotherapeutics
June 6

Just days after announcing the FDA is fast tracking its CAP-002 gene therapy program, Capsida Biotherapeutics has cut some of its workforce, a company spokesperson confirmed to BioSpace.

“Capsida Biotherapeutics is transitioning from a preclinical to a clinical-stage company and has made workforce adjustments to prioritize resources to advance its clinical and manufacturing efforts while continuing to support partnered programs,” the spokesperson said in a June 6 emailed statement. “The company recently received FDA IND clearance for CAP-002, its wholly owned, first-in-class gene therapy for STXBP1 developmental and epileptic encephalopathy, with first-in-human trials expected to start in the third quarter 2025. The company has also filed an IND for its wholly owned PD-GBA Parkinson’s program in the second quarter 2025. There are no changes to its leadership team.”

The spokesperson did not answer specific questions about the layoffs, including how many employees and types of roles were affected.

The Thousand Oaks, California–based company has 115 associated members on its LinkedIn People page. Several have the “#opentowork” photo frame, including a talent acquisition professional who said in a June 5 post, “Like many others, I was affected by the recent restructuring as the company moves deeper into its clinical stage. While it’s bittersweet, I understand the decision and fully support the direction Capsida is heading. This next phase demands focus, clarity, and tough calls.”

Rapt Therapeutics
June 5

Rapt Therapeutics is once again laying off an undisclosed number of employees, a company spokesperson confirmed to Fierce Biotech on Wednesday. The spokesperson did not provide additional details, including the date the terminations are effective, which roles would be affected or the reason for the layoffs.

Last week, several employees posted on LinkedIn that they had been let go from the California-based biotech. These include a research associate who had spent nearly three years at the company, and a senior research associate who had been with Rapt for five years. BioSpace reached out to Rapt last week but did not receive a response.

These layoffs come after Rapt in November 2024 discontinued the development of zelnecirnon, a midstage investigational oral drug that was being developed for asthma and atopic dermatitis. The decision to axe zelnecirnon was triggered by an FDA clinical hold in February that year, linked to a case of liver failure. In July 2024, just months after the regulatory freeze, Rapt downsized by around 40%, laying off 47 employees.

Plexium Inc.
June 4

The protein degradation company Plexium has “enacted a plan to align internal resources” in order to support its pipeline, the company told BioSpace in an email.

Though the company has not said what number or types of employees are affected by the move, former employees have been posting on LinkedIn for the last week, referring to a “reduction in force” and stating that they are looking for new roles.

The San Diego-based company has raised north of $100 million over multiple fundraising rounds during the last few years. That money has gone toward a pipeline focused on oncology targets as well as other diseases, all aimed at destroying drug targets using a cellular protein degradation process.

Keros Therapeutics
June 2

Keros Therapeutics will no longer develop the fusion protein cibotercept for pulmonary arterial hypertension, a move that the biotech on May 29 said triggered a 45% reduction in force. The cuts, once complete, will leave the Lexington, Massachusetts–based company with 85 employees.

The layoffs will start after the 60-day notice period required by law and will help Keros realize annualized savings of some $17 million, as per the news release.

The company’s announcement comes after Keros in December 2024 detected “unanticipated” cases of pericardial effusion, an abnormal accumulation of fluid around the heart, in patients treated with cibotercept. The safety signal caused the company’s stock to plummet more than 70% and pushed the business to suspend dosing in two of the higher-dose treatment arms in the study, though it continued treating patients in the 1.5-mg/kg arm.

A month later, however, Keros ran into more cases of pericardial effusion, including in the remaining dose group, which ultimately forced the biopharma to completely halt dosing in the trial.

For more details, read the article.

Stealth BioTherapeutics
June 2

To help direct resources toward a potential new drug application resubmission for Barth syndrome therapy elamipretide, Stealth BioTherapeutics has laid off 30% of its workforce, the company announced May 29. The Needham, Massachusetts–based biotech did not specify how many employees it let go, but its LinkedIn People page lists 65 associated members, meaning the cuts may have affected around 28 staffers.

Stealth, which is working on therapies for diseases involving mitochondrial dysfunction, submitted its new drug application for elamipretide in January 2024. Although the FDA has now rejected it, the company shared in its announcement that the agency identified a potential accelerated approval pathway that requires NDA resubmission.

Stealth noted that the move follows years of discussions with the FDA and a 2024 Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee meeting that concluded the drug candidate is effective for treating Barth syndrome. The rare condition is typically characterized by an enlarged and weakened heart, muscle weakness and recurrent infections, among other symptoms.

In October, the committee voted 10-6 in favor of elamipretide. However, many members noted the flawed nature of Stealth’s data supporting the drug and uncertainties regarding its clinical efficacy.

In its announcement, Stealth noted that elamipretide’s development path has been complex, involving four different FDA review divisions since the company first presented data to the FDA in 2019.

For more details, read the article.

iTeos Therapeutics
May 30

iTeos Therapeutics’ strategic review from just days ago culminated in a decision to wind down the company’s operations and sell off its remaining assets and intellectual property, the biotech announced May 28.

In an SEC filing on May 27, iTeos noted that it expected to absorb certain charges associated with the closure, though was yet “unable to make a good faith estimate of the total amount” of such costs. Nevertheless, the company anticipated expenses of around $21.8 million to $24.7 million associated with severance and employee termination costs. As of the end of 2024, iTeos had 173 full-time employees, most of whom were involved in R&D.

Just two weeks ago, the company lost a powerhouse partner in GSK after the anti-TIGIT therapy on which they were partnered, belrestotug, showed disappointing midstage findings. iTeos CEO Michel Detheux at the time said the decision to discontinue the development of belrestotug was mutual, though its effects weighed much heavier on his business. iTeos was forced to launch a targeted strategic review to identify ways to maximize remaining capital and value for shareholders.

In its first-quarter earnings report last month, the company noted that it still had $624.3 million in cash and investments, enough to keep it afloat through 2027.

For more details, read the article.

Allergan Aesthetics
May 29

AbbVie’s aesthetics arm Allergan Aesthetics is laying off 202 employees at its Irvine, California, site, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notice posted last week.

It’s unclear how many full-time employees Allergan has—AbbVie does not report such figures in its annual filings—but there are around 2,100 associated members on the unit’s LinkedIn page. The workforce reduction will take effect on July 22 as per the WARN notice. In total, AbbVie had roughly 55,000 employees across more than 70 countries as of the end of 2024.

The Orange County Business Journal noted last week that most of the affected employees work remotely, with only 19 present on-site at the Irvine facility. The layoffs will involve sales employees, data engineers and product managers across many different divisions, as per the Journal.

The layoffs come after Allergan’s revamped loyalty program failed to return the results it had expected. In October 2024, Allergan lifted the veil on its Allē program, which gave out points and rewards to patients that they could apply to legacy products such as Botox and Juvéderm. The goal was to encourage patients to get treated more often and build loyalty, benefiting providers.

For more details, read the article.

Boundless Bio
May 27

In connection with a pipeline shift involving its lead candidate, Boundless Bio is cutting 33% of its workforce, the company announced May 23. The San Diego–based biotech had 64 employees as of March 21, according to its annual report, meaning the layoffs could affect around 21 people.

Boundless expects to mostly complete the workforce reduction in the second quarter and to incur about $1.2 million in related costs, it noted in a May 23 SEC filing. The company anticipates the move will help extend its operating runway into the first half of 2028. Boundless had cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments of $138.3 million as of March 31.

Regarding its pipeline, the biotech is discontinuing its monotherapy and combination arms of BBI-355 in its POTENTIATE clinical trial after disappointing Phase I/II results and based on “market considerations.” BBI-355, an oral selective CHK1 inhibitor, was designed to target replication stress in oncogene-amplified cancers.

Boundless will now evaluate the CHK1 inhibitor and BBI-825, an oral selective ribonucleotide reductase inhibitor, as a combination therapy in the POTENTIATE trial. The company expects to start clinical development in the second half of 2025. Boundless has also named BBI-940 as the development candidate for its novel kinesin program and expects to submit an investigational new drug submission in the first half of 2026. The program targets a previously undrugged kinesin involved in DNA segregation, including extrachromosomal DNA segregation during mitosis, according to the company.

Prothena
May 27

After its anti-amyloid antibody birtamimab missed its primary endpoint in the Phase III AFFIRM-AL trial, Prothena is evaluating business options that include an “expected substantial workforce reduction,” the company announced May 23. The biotech will provide more details regarding the strategic review in June.

Prothena had 163 employees as of Dec. 31, 116 of whom worked in research and development, according to its annual report. The Dublin-based company’s U.S. operations are in Brisbane, California.

In its May 23 announcement, Prothena also noted it’s discontinuing development of birtamimab, which was unable to significantly improve time to all-cause mortality in patients with AL amyloidosis in the AFFIRM-AL trial. The move includes terminating the open-label extension phase of the trial.

Prothena had previously tested birtamimab in the Phase III VITAL study, enrolling 260 newly diagnosed patients with AL amyloidosis who had not yet undergone treatment. The study was discontinued in April 2018 for futility. Full data, released a year later, confirmed that birtamimab did not significantly increase time to all-cause mortality or cardiac hospitalization.

In the first quarter of 2025, Prothena reported a net loss of $60.2 million, lower than its $72.2 million deficit during the same period a year prior. As of March 31, the company had $418.8 million in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash with no debt.

For more details, read the article.

Eikon Therapeutics
May 22

Citing “external forces” and the need to “sharpen its focus and generate efficiencies in our operations,” Eikon Therapeutics on Wednesday announced a 15% reduction in force. The biotech announced the layoffs in a post on LinkedIn but, as of writing, has yet to issue a press release or a regulatory submission regarding the matter.

In an interview with Endpoints News in February, Eikon CEO Roger Perlmutter said the company had approximately 425 employees, meaning Wednesday’s layoffs would affect at most 64 people. The company has offices in New York, New Jersey and California but did not reveal which sites would be affected by the staff cuts. According to a California Worker Retraining Notification Act notice, 55 employees were let go at Eikon’s Millbrae, California, headquarters effective July 21.

The layoffs come even after the biotech raised an initial sum of $350.7 million in its Series D financing round in February. That funding brought Eikon’s total haul to over $1.1 billion since its founding in 2019. In its LinkedIn post on Wednesday, Eikon pointed to “government funding cuts” and “reduced investment in the global biotechnology sector” as reasons necessitating the workforce reduction.

Update (May 22): This entry was updated to add the number of employees let go in California.

Schrödinger, Inc.

May 21

In an effort to reduce its “cash burn rate,” Schrödinger on Tuesday announced it would part ways with 60 employees, corresponding to approximately 7% of its workforce. The company also announced that its chief financial officer, Geoffrey Porges, will step down from his role, effective June 6, until which time he will work with Schrödinger to ensure a smooth transition.

Richie Jain, senior vice president for strategic finance and head of corporate and business development, will succeed Porges.

Schrödinger, a New York-based biotech with an office in Oregon, is focused on using its proprietary computational platform to aid drug discovery. It has three clinical assets, all of which are in Phase I development and target various malignant diseases. The company has not specified which sites Tuesday’s layoffs will affect—as of writing BioSpace has not seen WARN notices from Schrödinger in New York or Oregon.

Earlier this month, the biotech revealed it had around 900 employees across 15 sites globally. In the first quarter, Schrödinger reported a net loss of $59.8 million.

Prime Medicine
May 20

As part of a strategic restructuring that includes deprioritizing its chronic granulomatous disease (CGD) programs, Prime Medicine is cutting about 25% of its staff and saying goodbye to its CEO, who resigned, the company announced May 19. The Cambridge, Massachusetts–based biotech had 214 full-time employees as of Dec. 31, 2024, according to an SEC filing, meaning the layoffs could affect about 54 people.

The gene editing company did not say when the cuts are effective nor which locations are impacted. Prime has lab and office space not only in Cambridge but also in Watertown, Massachusetts. As to the leadership change, CEO Keith Gottesdiener is stepping down immediately, according to the announcement. Prime has named Chief Financial Officer Allan Reine CEO.

Regarding its CGD programs, the company reported initial positive data from a Phase I/II clinical trial of PM359 but noted that it’s exploring options for continued clinical development of the therapy outside of the company. It’s also stopping further efforts in X-linked CGD.

Moving forward, Prime is focused on advancing in vivo programs to cure genetic liver diseases Wilson’s disease and alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, according to the announcement. The biotech expects clinical data from both programs in 2027. Prime is also continuing work on its in vivo cystic fibrosis program and developing prime edited CAR T products for hematology, immunology and oncology in partnership with Bristol Myers Squibb. The company announced its deal with BMS, worth a potential $3.5 billion, in September.

In its May 19 announcement, Prime noted that cost-cutting moves including the layoffs are intended to significantly decrease operating expenses and cash burn, nearly halving expected financial needs through 2027.

Allogene Therapeutics
May 16

To extend its cash runway into the second half of 2027 and focus resources on clinical programs, San Francisco–based Allogene Therapeutics is laying off 28% of employees, according to a May 13 SEC filing. The biotech, which is developing allogeneic CAR T products for cancer and autoimmune disease, had 229 employees as of March 1, according to an earlier filing, meaning the cuts could involve around 64 people.

Allogene, which has office and lab space in San Francisco along with a cell therapy manufacturing facility in Newark, California, did not specify which locations the layoffs affect. However, given the company noted that it’s reducing manufacturing operations, the Newark site is likely impacted. The biotech expects to mostly complete the layoffs by the end of the second quarter.

As part of its path forward, Allogene is looking to advance two clinical trials to key inflection points but announced delays to those programs in a May 13 press release. The company has pushed back to the first half of 2026 the lymphodepletion regimen selection and futility analysis for its Phase II trial for cemacabtagene ansegedleucel (cema-cel) as a first line consolidation therapy for large B-cell lymphoma. It’s also shifted timing for an initial update from a Phase I trial for its autoimmune CAR T product to the first half of 2026 to allow for biomarker and clinical proof-of-concept data.

Allogene estimates it will incur about $3.3 million in cash-based expenses related to the workforce reduction. The company had a net loss of $59.7 million for the first quarter and an accumulated deficit of $1.9 billion as of March 31, according to its most recent SEC filing. It had $335.5 million in cash and cash equivalents and investments as of March 31.

Kyverna Therapeutics
May 15

Despite having what CEO Warner Biddle called an “exceptional start” to the year, Kyverna Therapeutics had to downsize by 16% in the first quarter. As of March 31, the biotech had 119 full-time employees, as per an SEC filing.

The layoffs are part of Kyverna’s effort to “streamline” its operations and support the development of its late-stage pipeline, while also extending its cash runway into 2027, the biotech announced on Tuesday, alongside its first-quarter earnings report.

Kyverna is advancing KYV-101, an investigational CD19 CAR T therapy for stiff person syndrome, for which the company has recently completed enrollment into the pivotal Phase II trial. KYV-101 is also being developed for myasthenia gravis. Kyverna has wrapped up an end-of-Phase II meeting with the FDA and has aligned with the regulator regarding late-stage development.

In the first quarter, Kyverna posted a net loss of $44.6 million, plunging it deeper into the red; during the same time period last year, the company’s net loss was $26.7 million. As of March 31, the biotech had $242.6 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, which should be enough to last it through key catalysts, including the filing of its first Biologics License Application and Phase III myasthenia gravis study, according to Tuesday’s press release.

Leap Therapeutics

May 14

Flagging what CEO Douglas Onsi called the “difficult market environment,” immune specialist Leap Therapeutics will lay off approximately half of its workforce.

The biotech made the announcement alongside its first-quarter 2024 earnings report, where it posted a net loss of $15.4 million, falling further into the red compared to the same period in 2024, during which it was operating with a $13.8 million deficit. Leap pointed to heightened R&D expenses as the reason for the increase in its loss.

Tuesday’s layoffs, alongside other strategic measures, will allow Leap to focus its resources on its investigational WNT blocker, sirexatamab. The biotech is running a Phase II trial of the drug candidate, in combination with bevacizumab, for the treatment of colorectal cancer, with an eye toward advancing into Phase III development. Leap will prioritize its preclinical neutralizing antibody, FL-501, which it is positioning as a therapy for cachexia in cancer.

The biotech had $32.7 million in cash and cash equivalents at the end of Q1.

Atara Biotherapeutics

May 14

Atara Biotherapeutics continues to shed its staff, announcing on Monday that it will downsize by approximately 30%, leaving only 23 employees behind who are “essential to executing on the Company’s strategic priorities,” according to an SEC filing.

This is the third time that Atara has downsized just this year. In January, Atara halved its headcount after the FDA rejected its blood cancer therapy Ebvallo. Then again in March, the biotech shrank its staff roster by half, while also discontinuing the development of two CAR T programs for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and systemic lupus erythematosus.

Monday’s reduction in force comes after the FDA last week released its clinical holds on Ebvallo, which it had placed in January due to manufacturing compliance issues.

Atara expects to complete this latest round of layoffs by August. It has forecasted a one-time charge of around $1.4 million, primarily associated with severance and other employee benefits.

Bayer

May 14

Bayer laid off some 2,000 employees in the first quarter of 2025, CEO Bill Anderson revealed in a media call May 13, alongside the presentation of the company’s first quarter earnings results.

“We are doing this change in our operating model across the company, in all three divisions,” Chief Financial Officer Wolfgang Nickl explained on the call. “There is a very keen focus more on the level of positions that are being reduced. They’re mostly management positions.”

Since first kicking off a sweeping reorganization initiative that began in July 2023, Bayer has let go of some 11,000 employees, Anderson noted on the call. This effort, he added, has made the company “leaner, faster and more productive,” while simultaneously allowing Bayer to free up resources “so our teams can flow them to the highest-impact work.”

It’s unknown exactly when in the first quarter the 2,000 employees were laid off. A Bayer spokesperson told BioSpace the company reports headcount changes only on a quarterly or annual—not monthly—basis.

For more details, read the article.

Lexeo Therapeutics
May 13

As part of its redeployment of about $20 million in capital from preclinical and noncardiac pipeline activities to its lead cardiac programs, Lexeo Therapeutics in April laid off roughly 15% of its employees, the company announced May 12. The New York–based biotech had 75 full-time employees as of March 31, according to an SEC filing, meaning the layoffs could affect around 11 employees.

Lexeo expects its updated capital structure will allow it to pursue key milestones for its clinical-stage pipeline, more quickly initiate a registrational study for investigational gene therapy LX2006—one of its lead cardiac programs—by early 2026 and maintain its runway into 2027. The company did not identify which parts of its pipeline the redeployment affects. Its website lists two cardiac programs in the preclinical stage and three Alzheimer’s therapies, only one of which is in clinical stage development.

The layoff news comes about a month after Lexeo shared that LX2006 can decrease the size and thickness of the left ventricle by one-fourth in patients with Friedreich’s ataxia cardiomyopathy. In its May 12 announcement, the company noted that it expects to initiate the registrational study for LX2006 by early 2026, with a potential efficacy readout in 2027.

For more details, read the article.

10x Genomics
May 13

In a bid to lower its spending by $50 million this year, 10x Genomics on Monday announced an 8% headcount reduction. As of December 31, 2024, the biotech had 1,306 full-time employees across its global operations, as per an SEC filing, meaning Monday’s layoffs would affect roughly 100 staff.

According to its SEC document, 10x Genomics expects to absorb between $5.5 million and $6.5 million in one-time costs, primarily related to severance payments. The company expects to complete these payments by the end of the third quarter.

10x Genomics announced the layoffs alongside its first-quarter earnings report on Monday. In the first three months of 2025, the biotech earned $154.9 million. It recorded a net loss $34.4 million in the quarter, smaller than its $59.9 million deficit during the same period the year prior. By the end of the quarter, 10x Genomics had $426.9 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities. It did not say how long its cash runway would last.

IGM Biosciences
May 12

Sanofi has turned its back on its partner IGM Biosciences, forcing the small California biotech to enact drastic strategic measures, including an 80% reduction in force. The company disclosed the layoffs—and the closure of most of its remaining lab and office facilities—in an SEC filing May 8. It noted that the moves would preserve cash.

According to its annual report, IGM had 149 full-time employees at the end of 2024. In January, the biotech reduced its workforce by 100 people, corresponding to 73% of its headcount, leaving it with 37 full-time staff. The new cuts leave IGM with around seven employees.

In its SEC filing, the company noted that Sanofi had informed it of the decision to walk away on May 5. The contract will formally end 30 days after the notice. IGM did not provide a specific reason for the termination, only revealing in its filing that the companies “concluded that conducting further activities under the Agreement was not in the interests of either party.”

IGM also noted in the filing that “The Company continues to evaluate potential strategic alternatives and reorganization options.” It did not specify what these options might be.

For more details, read the article.

Insitro
May 12

Looking to streamline operations, sharpen its focus on key priorities and extend its runway into 2027, insitro has cut 22% of its workforce, leaving a team of about 230 employees, the biotech announced May 7. The layoffs affect around 65 people.

“While challenging, this action amidst current macroeconomic uncertainty enables the advancement of our first-in-class pipeline in metabolic disease and neuroscience, ensures clinic readiness in 2026, and supports our continued investment in our key differentiator—innovation at the intersection of advanced AI/ML and data integration and generation at scale for novel biology discovery and drug development,” the San Francisco–based company said in its LinkedIn announcement.

In a separate LinkedIn post, insitro CEO Daphne Koller called May 7 one of the hardest days of her career as a chief executive officer and pointed to the “current tumultuous market environment” as driving the decision to lay off employees.

For more details, read the article.

Rallybio
May 12

Rallybio is laying off nine employees, about 40% of its total headcount, as it reels from the loss of its lead asset, the biotech announced in its first-quarter earnings report May 8.

The terminations will be “substantially complete” by the end of the second quarter, according to the press release. Rallybio expects to absorb roughly $1.7 million in one-time costs, primarily linked to severance and benefit payments. This sum, however, excludes share-based compensations. At the end of Q1, the biotech had $54.5 million on hand, which it expects can keep it afloat into the first half of 2027.

Last month, Rallybio was forced to drop its former lead molecule RLYB212 following its disappointing pharmacokinetic performance in a Phase II trial. The candidate, an investigational monoclonal antibody, was being trialed for a rare bleeding disorder called fetal and neonatal alloimmune thrombocytopenia, where a mother’s immune system attacks the fetus. In the mid-stage study, RLYB212 failed to reach its target concentration, or even the minimum level required for efficacy.

For more details, read the article.

Shape Therapeutics
May 9

Shape Therapeutics has laid off an undisclosed number of employees as part of a six-month shift to a pipeline focus, Fierce Biotech reported. While the Seattle-based genomics medicines company lists a Boston location on its website, it is unclear if the layoffs affect one or both sites.

Shape’s interim CEO and chief scientific officer, David Huss, told Fierce the business has chosen development candidates in Parkinson’s disease and ABCA4-related diseases and is conducting IND-enabling studies. The company does not list a pipeline on its website, where it notes that it’s realizing its vision of repairing the genetic causes of disease by combining artificial intelligence and RNA technology to make programmable RNA.

Vor Bio
May 9

Cambridge, Massachusetts–based Vor Bio is bowing out amid a tough funding environment after examining the clinical data currently available for its assets. The company will let go of 147 employees, or 95% of its staff, and expects to complete the layoffs by the end of the second quarter, according to an SEC filing.

Vor, co-founded in 2015 by oncologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee based on work from his Columbia University laboratory, was focused on cell therapies for acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome.

The company will now cease all clinical and manufacturing activity, including ongoing clinical trials, and look for ways to “maximize shareholder value.” This could include licensing or selling its assets, executing a merger, selling the company outright or some other “strategic action,” according to a May 8 announcement. The decision to wind down operations is based entirely on Vor’s available clinical data and a “challenging fundraising environment,” according to the release.

For more details, read the article.

Teva
May 8

Teva is laying off some 2,900 of its employees worldwide, corresponding to an approximately 8% reduction in force, company executives announced Wednesday during the company’s first-quarter 2025 earnings report, according to various media reports.

The layoffs will run through 2027 and come even as the company announced its “ninth consecutive quarter of growth.” Teva has in place a strategic growth initiative that it expects to generate some $700 million in net savings by 2027, while also delivering a 30% operating margin, according to CEO Richard Francis.

“We’re accelerating innovative growth and strengthening our generics business, while streamlining our operations, sharpening our business and optimizing processes,” Francis added in a statement on Wednesday.

Teva made $3.9 billion in the first quarter, a 5% year-on-year increase driven by a stronger market performance of Austedo, its oral drug for Huntington’s disease chorea and tardive dyskinesia. Teva’s migraine drug Ajovy and its generics business both also contributed strongly to its Q1 performance. The company narrowed its full-year projections, now expecting to make $16.8 billion to $17.2 billion in 2025.

Korro Bio
May 8

In a bid to keep its business afloat into 2027, Korro Bio is streamlining its operations, a move that will involve a 20% workforce reduction, the biotech announced Wednesday alongside its Q1 business report.

The layoffs, which will cost Korro $1.2 million in one-time payments, will help the biotech advance its assets to “key value inflection points.” In particular, Korro aims to complete its ongoing Phase I/IIa REWRITE trial, which is testing its investigational RNA-editing oligonucleotide KRRO-110 in alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency. The company expects to wrap up REWRITE in 2026.

In the first quarter, Korro reported a net loss of $23.5 million, putting it deeper into the red: during the same period last year, it was operating with a $19.6 million loss. As of March 31, the biotech had $139.0 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, enough to support its operations into 2027.

Aside from KRRO-110, Korro is also working on its collaboration with Novo Nordisk, with which the biotech can advance up to two programs using its proprietary drug discovery platform. One of these programs will be for a yet-undisclosed cardiometabolic condition.

NGM Bio

May 7

NGM Bio is cutting 85 employees, according to a San Francisco WARN Notice from last week. The layoffs, which will affect staff at its San Mateo County location, will take effect on June 30. The workforce reduction affects 75% of the workforce, Fierce Biotech reported May 12

NGM is built around a “biology-centric drug discovery approach,” which it leverages to generate candidates with a “therapeutic area-agnostic mindset.” Its lead asset is the engineered hormone aldafermin, which is patterned after the FGF19 hormone and is in Phase II development for primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC). The biotech is also working on therapies for cancer cachexia, solid tumors and the pregnancy-related complication hyperemesis gravidarum.

In February 2024, NGM announced a merger with affiliates of The Column Group, which is the biotech’s “longest and largest stockholder,” owning a 26% stake in NGM, according to a press announcement at the time. The move made NGM a privately held biotech. Months later, NGM closed a $122 million Series A financing round to support a registrational study for aldafefrmin in PSC.

Update (May 12): This entry was updated to change the percentage of employees affected based on an article published after this tracker entry published. A sentence that had estimated the percentage was therefore removed.

Mersana Therapeutics
May 6

To help extend its cash runway into mid-2026 and further development of a key asset, Mersana Therapeutics is letting go of about 55% of its workforce, the company announced May 6. Mersana, which is developing antibody-drug conjugates targeting cancers of high unmet medical need, expects to mostly complete the cuts by the end of the third quarter.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts–based company had 102 full-time employees as of Dec. 31, according to a March 3 SEC filing, meaning the layoffs could leave the business with just under 50 employees. Mersana expects to incur about $4 million to $5 million in costs related to the workforce reduction.

With the move, the company is looking to further development of its site-specific ADC emiltatug ledadotin and will focus those efforts on breast cancer, according to the announcement. Mersana is also reducing research activities and eliminating its internal pipeline development efforts. The company noted it plans to continue supporting Phase I dose escalation work for its systemically administered ADC XMT-2056 and its ongoing collaborations with Johnson & Johnson and Merck KGaA.

As of Dec. 31, Mersana had an accumulated deficit of $895.6 million and cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities of $134.6 million, according to its March 3 SEC filing.

Biomea Fusion
May 6

To reduce operating expenses and extend its cash runway into the fourth quarter, Biomea Fusion is cutting about 35% of its workforce, the company announced May 5. The biotech had 79 full-time employees as of March 31, according to an SEC filing on that date, meaning the layoffs could leave the business with around 50 employees.

Redwood City, California–based Biomea, a clinical-stage diabetes and obesity company, leases operating, laboratory and manufacturing space in Redwood City and San Carlos, California. The business is consolidating its workforce at its San Carlos research facility as of May 31, according to the announcement.

Moving forward, Biomea said it will focus development efforts and investments on icovamenib, a novel oral menin inhibitor for diabetes, and BMF-650, a next-generation oral GLP-1 receptor agonist. Regarding icovamenib, the biotech plans to meet with the FDA in the second half of the year to discuss a Phase IIb trial design and requirements for advancing the drug into later-stage clinical development. Biomea expects to submit an investigational new drug (IND) application for BMF-650 in the second half of 2025.

The company is also exploring strategic partnerships for its acute leukemia asset BMF-500, whose survival data from a dose escalation study are expected in the second quarter. The move to conclude its oncology efforts with BMF-500 was expected, as Biomea announced in January that it was shifting its focus to diabetes and obesity medicines.

Unity Biotechnology
May 6

As Unity Biotechnology evaluates strategic alternatives that could include a merger, sale or wind down, it’s letting go of its entire workforce, the company announced May 5. Unity had 16 employees as of Dec. 31, according to a March 7 SEC filing.

The San Francisco–based biotech, which has been developing therapeutics to slow, halt or reverse diseases of aging, expects to mostly complete the workforce reduction by May 15, according to a May 5 SEC filing. Unity estimated it will incur about $3.7 million in costs related to the layoffs. The company had cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities of $16.9 million as of March 31.

Unity announced the staff cuts alongside 36-week results from the Phase IIb ASPIRE clinical trial of intravitreal UBX1325 in patients with diabetic macular edema who had poor vision despite prior treatment. Unity noted that the investigational eye therapy was statistically noninferior to Regeneron’s Eylea at week 36 and generally outperformed its competitor in subjects with moderately aggressive disease. In March, Unity announced that topline data from the Phase IIb ASPIRE study showed that UBX1325 showed noninferiority at an 88% confidence interval, short of the 90% prespecified threshold for the study’s primary endpoint.

Mammoth Biosciences
May 6

Mammoth Biosciences is cutting 24 employees as it restructures, Fierce Biotech reported. The Brisbane, California–based biotech’s CEO, Trevor Martin, confirmed the news to Fierce in an emailed statement.

Mammoth has 183 associated members on its LinkedIn People page, meaning the cuts may affect around 13% of its workforce.

Martin told Fierce that the company is focusing efforts on ensuring it has the right organization to drive internal programs to the clinic, support its partnerships and push forward innovative research to develop new curative therapies. The company lists Regeneron, Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Bayer as its partners on its website.

On May 5, Mammoth announced it had nominated its first clinical development candidate, MB-111. The company hopes the drug candidate will become a first-in-class one-time treatment for patients with high-triglyceride diseases, including familial chylomicronemia syndrome and severe hypertriglyceridemia. MB-111 uses CasPhi—an ultracompact CRISPR in vivo gene editing system—encapsulated in a lipid nanoparticle for delivery to the liver after IV administration.

Bristol Myers Squibb
May 6

Bristol Myers Squibb is making yet more cuts to its Lawrenceville, New Jersey, workforce, this time axing 516 people, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice. The layoffs will come in multiple waves starting May 9 and ending March 27, 2026.

BMS has its headquarters and a location housing its commercialization and late-stage development teams in Lawrenceville. It was not immediately clear if the cuts affect both sites, and the company did not provide a response to a BioSpace question about that workforce reduction prior to publication of this article.

This is the third round of layoffs BMS has disclosed for Lawrenceville in 2025, bringing that area’s total number of affected employees this year to 806.

The pharma has made significant cuts to its workforce recently. In April 2024, the company announced it would eliminate about 2,200 jobs by the end of last year as part of an effort to save approximately $1.5 billion through 2025. In February, BMS announced that the strategic reorganization would go even deeper, with an additional $2 billion in savings through 2027. Those savings will come from organizational design changes and enhanced operational efficiency, according to a fourth quarter earnings release.

For more details, read the article.

Pliant Therapeutics
May 5

About two months after discontinuing the Phase IIb/III BEACON-IPF study of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis drug candidate bexotegrast, Pliant Therapeutics announced it’s cutting roughly 45% of its workforce. The move is meant to help extend the San Francisco–based biotech’s cash runway to support execution of late-stage clinical trials. The company, which develops oral integrin inhibitors for fibrotic diseases, did not say how long that runway will last.

Pliant had 171 full-time employees—including 117 in research and development—as of Dec. 31, according to a March 3 SEC filing, meaning the cuts could affect about 77 employees. The biotech expects to mostly complete the layoffs by the end of the second quarter, incurring about $3.6 million in related costs, according to a May 1 SEC filing.

In February, Pliant voluntarily suspended dosing and enrollment in the Phase IIb/III BEACON-IPF study of bexotegrast following a prespecified data review by an independent data safety monitoring board. The company did not identify the reasons behind the board’s recommendation but noted that it was reviewing BEACON-IPF’s data to understand the rationale behind it.

Pliant in March announced it was discontinuing the trial following that review due to an imbalance in unadjudicated IPF-related adverse events between the treatment and placebo groups. The company also noted it would evaluate next steps for the drug candidate’s development and would consider additional dose-ranging Phase IIb studies in pulmonary fibrosis and potentially other nonrespiratory indications, including liver diseases.

For more details, read the article.

Arvinas
May 2

While announcing first quarter results, Arvinas said that it is ending two Phase III trials for its cancer molecule vepdegestrant while laying off “approximately one-third” of its staff, in an effort “to streamline operations across the organization and enable the efficient progression of the Company’s portfolio.”

In a filing with the SEC, the company said that the streamlining would be completed by the end of the second quarter 2025 and would cost about $10 million in severance and other one-time employee termination benefit expenses. At the end of 2024, Arvinas said that it had approximately 430 full-time employees, suggesting that layoffs would impact about 143 people.

Bristol Myers Squibb
May 2

About two years ago, Bristol Myers Squibb bought a manufacturing plant in the Chicago suburbs from Novartis, with plans to make viral vectors for BMS’ CAR T therapeutics there.

Now, BMS is shutting the plant down as part of BMS’ ongoing cost-cutting spree. The company is laying off 133 employees, with the first layoff date on June 1, according to a Worker Retraining Notification Act notice.

Update (May 12): This entry was updated to note the number of employees affected based on a WARN notice published after this tracker entry published.

Entrada Therapeutics
May 1

As it focuses resources on Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) clinical candidates and key preclinical programs, Entrada Therapeutics disclosed layoff and hiring plans in an April 29 SEC filing. Although the biotech will hire to support a planned global clinical trial for Duchenne, it will also reduce research staff, affecting about 20% of its workforce.

The Boston-based biotech, which focuses on intracellular therapeutics, had 183 full-time employees as of Feb. 20, according to another SEC filing, meaning the cuts could affect about 37 people. Entrada expects to mostly complete the layoffs by the end of the second quarter and to incur about $2 million in related expenses. The company also noted in its April 29 filing that it should be able to maintain its current cash runway into the second quarter of 2027.

News of the layoffs comes just over two months after Entrada announced the FDA had removed a clinical hold on DMD candidate ENTR-601-44, the biotech’s exon 44 skipping oligonucleotide. The agency issued that hold in December 2022. Entrada did not provide a reason for the FDA’s decision at that time.

For more details, read the article.

Octagon Therapeutics
April 30

Following the deprioritization of a lead B cell immunomodulator program and unresolved biology questions around a high-potential pipeline effort, Octagon Therapeutics is winding down operations, its CEO and co-founder announced April 28 on LinkedIn.

“Over the past 7 years, we have made fundamental discoveries, pioneered new methods, built a talented team, and assembled a supportive investor base and Board of Directors,” CEO Isaac Stoner said in his LinkedIn post. “The toughest part about this business is that you can execute perfectly and still confront a scientific no-go.”

The Providence, Rhode Island–based biotech, which also has lab space in Cambridge, Massachusetts, lists 13 “associated members” on its LinkedIn People page, indicating the closure could affect around a dozen employees.

For more details, read the article.

Spruce Biosciences
April 29

A little over a year after cutting 21% of its workforce, Spruce Biosciences has disclosed it’s axing 55% of its employees, according to an April 25 SEC filing. The San Francisco–based late-stage biopharma had 21 employees as of Dec. 31, 2024, according to an April 15 SEC filing, meaning that the layoffs could leave the business with around 10 employees.

Spruce noted in its most recent filing that it’s reducing staff to prioritize development and potential accelerated approval of its tralesinidase alfa enzyme replacement therapy (TA-ERT) for Sanfilippo syndrome type B (MPS IIIB), a rare genetic disorder caused by an enzyme deficiency. The company announced April 15 that it had acquired TA-ERT from BioMarin and intends to seek U.S. accelerated approval of the therapy for MPS-IIIB, starting with a new confirmatory trial. Spruce also noted that if its biologics license application (BLA) is approved, it will build a highly specialized commercial and medical affairs organization to support commercialization of the therapy.

For now, the company will operate with a streamlined staff. Its workforce cuts are effective immediately, with a termination date of May 2. Spruce expects to incur about $900,000 in cash charges in connection with the workforce reduction and to record most of those charges in the second quarter.

For more details, read the article.

Ono Pharmaceutical
April 28

Ono Pharmaceutical is cutting 83 employees at its U.S. subsidiary in Cambridge, Massachusetts, effective June 30, according to a Worker Retraining Notification Act (WARN) notice. The company did not issue a formal announcement of the cuts or reason behind them.

The Japan-based pharma made news in February when it received FDA approval for Romvimza for the treatment of tenosynovial giant cell tumor, which will allow it to compete head to head with Daiichi Sankyo’s Turalio in the tenosynovial giant cell tumor market.

Caribou Biosciences
April 28

Caribou Biosciences’ latest pivot to immunology is not going to plan. The cell and gene therapy company is laying off nearly one-third of its workforce and ending work on its lupus pipeline, according to an SEC filing April 24. That leaves the Berkeley, California–based biotech with just two remaining assets, both allogeneic, or “off-the-shelf,” CAR T products for a variety of different cancers.

Caribou expects the layoffs to be mostly done by the end of the second quarter. The cuts affect 47 employees, representing 32% of the company’s staff.

Caribou had announced plans to make a move into the autoimmune space late last year, after getting Fast Track designation for its CAR T treatment CB-010 for systemic lupus erythematosus. In January, it announced a Phase I trial testing CB-010 for lupus nephritis and extrarenal lupus but never dosed a patient. Now, the company is pivoting back to its roots in cancer. CB-010 is being tested for B cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma, while CB-011 is being trialed in multiple myeloma.

For more details, read the article.

Tempest Therapeutics
April 22

About a week after announcing it was eyeing strategic alternatives, including a merger or acquisition, Tempest Therapeutics disclosed it is cutting about 80% of its workforce. The Brisbane, California–based biotech is letting go of 21 of its 26 full-time employees effective April 30, according to an April 18 SEC filing. The company expects key staff will transition to consulting agreements.

Tempest anticipates it will incur about $1.5 million in costs in connection with the workforce reduction, primarily in one-time severance payments, according to the filing.

On April 9, the company announced it was exploring strategic alternatives so it could advance clinical-stage programs and maximize stockholder value. Those programs include the PPARα antagonist amezalpat, which has FDA orphan drug and fast track designations for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and which the biotech deemed “Phase 3-ready” in the press release. In addition to a merger or acquisition, Tempest said it was also considering partnerships, licensing deals or joint ventures.

For more details, read the article.

Mural Oncology
April 15

Following disappointing results in two clinical trials for its lead program, Mural Oncology is cutting about 90% of its staff and exploring strategic alternatives, the oncology company announced April 15. The biotech has also discontinued clinical development of nemvaleukin alfa, an engineered interleukin-2 variant.

Mural’s workforce reduction will affect about 104 employees and should be mostly complete by the end of the second quarter, according to an April 15 SEC filing. The company, which is registered in Dublin, has its primary facilities in Waltham, Mass.

Mural noted in its press release that in the second cohort of a Phase II clinical trial evaluating nemvaleukin as a monotherapy in patients with mucosal melanoma, the drug candidate did not meet its primary endpoint. The company also said it “did not observe a level of activity that warranted continuation” in the third cohort of the trial, which was studying less-frequent intravenous dosing of nemvaleukin in patients with cutaneous melanoma.

The company in March announced disappointing results for a Phase III trial of nemvaleukin in combination with Merck’s anti-PD-1 therapy Keytruda in patients with platinum-resistant ovarian cancer. That trial did not achieve a statistically significant improvement in overall survival versus chemotherapy alone.

Mural expects to incur costs of about $9 million to $10 million related to the workforce reduction, according to the SEC filing. The company noted in the April 15 press release that it had $144.4 million in cash, cash equivalent and marketable securities as of Dec. 31.

Myeloid Therapeutics
April 15

Myeloid Therapeutics has restructured its staff to focus on two clinical-stage programs, Endpoints News reported. Daniel Getts, CEO and co-founder of the Cambridge, Mass.–based immunology company, confirmed the restructuring to Endpoints. He did not tell the media outlet how many employees were laid off but said the changes “particularly” affected Myeloid’s preclinical teams.

Myeloid’s two clinical-stage programs are MT-302 and MT-303, both in vivo immune cell programming therapies. The company is studying MT-302 for use in colon, lung and breast cancer and MT-303 for use in liver cancer. Getts told Endpoints that dose escalation is underway for both therapies, which are in Phase I clinical trials.

Getts did not identify which programs Myeloid has deprioritized in favor of MT-302 and MT-303. However, according to the company’s website, aside from those two therapies, the pipeline consists of a myeloid cell editing program and a gene editing program. Both are in the discovery stage.

Opthea
April 11

Shortly after announcing the discontinuation of two wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) Phase III clinical trials, Australia-based Opthea disclosed it will cut about 65% of its workforce to conserve cash. A limited number of staff will remain to oversee termination of the trials and administrative operations, according to an April 10 SEC filing.

Opthea had 49 full-time employees as of Dec. 31, the company noted in a Feb. 28 SEC filing, meaning that the layoffs could leave it with around 17 people. The biotech did not say if the cuts, expected to be effective May 1, will involve its U.S. headquarters in Princeton, New Jersey.

In late March, Opthea’s COAST and ShORe Phase III clinical trials for investigational eye therapy sozinibercept—which binds VEGF, a protein that helps form new blood vessels—yielded disappointing results. Neither trial met its primary endpoint of mean change in best corrected visual acuity from baseline to week 52. As a result, sozinibercept failed to unseat Regeneron’s blockbuster Eylea as the standard of care.

In its April 10 SEC filing, Opthea said one-off costs associated with the layoffs will be about $4.5 million and estimated it had cash and cash equivalents of $100 million at the end of March. The company also noted “uncertainty as to Opthea’s ability to continue as a going concern.” According to its Feb. 28 SEC filing, the company had a net loss of $137.9 million for the six months ended Dec. 31.

Pfizer
April 11

Pfizer will let go of 56 employees in San Diego effective June 6, according to a Worker Retraining Notification Act (WARN) notice. Affected roles include a vice president as well as several directors, managers and senior associates, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. The newspaper noted that operations at the site will continue.

When BioSpace in March asked Pfizer to confirm rumored layoffs, a company spokesperson would not verify specific cuts. However, they told BioSpace via email that the New York–based pharma has been “actively engaged in reducing its cost base to operate more efficiently and effectively.” The spokesperson noted that the company has two programs underway totaling an anticipated $6 billion in net cost savings by the end of 2027:

• A cost realignment program: First announced in fall 2023, the program aimed to achieve a net cost savings of $4 billion through 2024, a goal the company met. Pfizer has increased its overall savings target to about $4.5 billion by the end of this year.
• A manufacturing optimization program: Announced in May 2024, the program involves bringing the company’s operating margins closer to prepandemic levels. Pfizer expects to achieve about $1.5 billion in savings from the first phase of cuts by the end of 2027.

In separate news, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that the pharma sold its five-building San Diego campus to BioMed Realty, a life science-focused commercial real estate company, for about $255 million. The layoffs are not connected to that sale, a Pfizer spokesperson told the Union-Tribune. Neither the pharma nor BioMed would clarify to the newspaper if Pfizer will continue leasing buildings on that campus or move out.

Vincerx Pharma
April 10

After terminating a nonbinding letter of intent for a potential merger with QumulusAI, Vincerx Pharma will wind down, the company announced April 8. The San Mateo, California–based biotech, whose pipeline focused on addressing unmet medical needs for cancer patients, is also exploring monetization of assets and outlicensing opportunities.

This is the second recent move to impact Vincerx employees. In the fourth quarter, the company executed a series of workforce reductions to streamline operations and control ongoing costs while pursuing strategic alternatives, according to a March 27 SEC filing. Vincerx had 12 full-time employees as of Dec. 31.

The deal with QumulusAI, a company focused on universalizing access to AI computing, was Vincerx’s second merger attempt. It had also explored merging with Oqory, a clinical-stage company developing antibody-drug conjugates. In February, Vincerx announced the deal was off.

In the April 8 press release, Raquel Izumi, acting CEO, said, “Although unprecedented, adverse market dynamics prevented us from continuing the development of our programs, numerous patients with cancer—who had few therapeutic options—benefited from our therapies in the Phase 1 trials.”

Reckitt Benckiser
April 10

U.K.-based Reckitt Benckiser, which makes Mucinex, is in the process of laying off 190 employees at its U.S. headquarters in Parsippany, New Jersey, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) notice. The cuts began Sept. 8 and will continue through Aug. 1.

The workforce reduction is likely tied to the company’s restructuring, announced in July as a “move to a simpler, more effective organisation to maximise long-term value for shareholders.” Reckitt is now focusing on its high-growth, high-margin “powerbrands” including Mucinex, which treats cold and flu symptoms.

Although the company is cutting employees in New Jersey, it’s adding workers in North Carolina. In December, Reckitt announced it had acquired a pharmaceutical site in Wilson to expand its U.S. manufacturing footprint and produce Mucinex tablets and liquids to meet increased consumer demand. The facility is expected to create nearly 300 jobs.

Tango Therapeutics
April 9

Tango Therapeutics is downsizing by 20%, laying off around 30 employees, as per a Tuesday report from BioPharma Dive.

In a statement to the publication, CEO Barbara Weber pointed to the “extremely challenging financial markets” as a reason for the cuts, adding that they will help Tango lower its expenditures related to preclinical research. “We, like so many others, have been forced to take steps to extend our cash runway,” she said. Tango had 155 employees at the end of 2024, as per its 10-K filing.

In May 2024, Tango terminated the development of its USP1 inhibitor TNG348, which it had been testing in patients with solid tumors harboring BRCA1/2 mutations, among other genetic abnormalities. The discontinuation was due to liver toxicities, the biotech announced at the time.

A few months later, in November 2024, Tango deprioritized the development of TNG908, one of its three PRMT5 inhibitors, in favor of TNG462, which it said at the time had “superior target coverage” and a better safety and efficacy profile. TNG462, being trialed for pancreatic and lung cancers, is now Tango’s lead asset.

Charles River Laboratories

April 9

For the second time in just over a month, Charles River Laboratories is trimming its headcount. According to a WARN notice last week, the manufacturer and contract research organization has terminated 13 employees from its facility in Frederick, Maryland.

The layoffs took place on March 28 and are in relation to the closure of a production plant in the area.

Charles River has enacted a series of staffing cuts in recent months. In February, a company spokesperson confirmed to Fierce Biotech that it would be reducing its workforce in Memphis, Tennessee. Charles River likewise announced in January that it would be letting go of 31 employees from its site in Durham County, North Carolina. In November, the company closed 15 of its smaller sites in a bid to consolidate its business, as per an Endpoints News report.

Actavis Laboratories

April 8

Utah-based Actavis Laboratories is letting go of 78 employees in its Salt Lake City facility, effective April 18, according to a WARN notice.

Actavis was previously the generics arm of Allergan—which was later bought by AbbVie--before it was acquired by Teva Pharmaceuticals in August 2016. At the time, the companies touted the deal as the combination of two of the largest generics players in the industry, resulting in a portfolio of more than 300 product registrations with the FDA.

Soon after the acquisition, in November 2016, Teva laid off 200 of Actavis’ employees.

Oncodesign Precision Medicine

April 8

In its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings report last week, Oncodesign Precision Medicine launched a cost-cutting initiative that involved the termination of five employees, which went into effect last January.

As part of this savings push, OPM also lowered the salaries of its CEO an CSO by 50%. The biotech also expects to see other planned savings from its non-priority program, as per the company’s announcement. By the end of 2024, OPM had a cash position of €5.1 million, though it has recently received €8.5 million worth of public investments, with more payments scheduled throughout the year.

In December 2024, Servier axed its Parkinson’s disease partnership with OPM, handing back rights to its early-stage LRRK2 blocker OPM-201. The partners at the time had just wrapped up a Phase I study in healthy volunteers, with data expected in the second quarter of this year. OPM was expecting a milestone payment from Servier under this partnership—money that will no longer be coming in.

AmplifyBio

April 8

AmplifyBio is closing down its operations, according to an announcement on its website. It is not clear how many employees will be affected by the closure.

“This decision comes after months of tireless efforts by the AmplifyBio leadership team, investors and other key stakeholders to explore and exhaust all investment and acquisition possibilities,” the CRO-CDMO wrote, pointing to a “significant shift” in market dynamics over the last couple of years, which has dried up investor financing for early-phase development, in turn limiting the company’s opportunity to grow.

In December, AmplifyBio shuttered its facility in South San Francisco, and terminated an undisclosed number of employees, as it wound down its R&D and characterization services. The company was still trying to stay afloat then, transferring some of its work to a new site in Ohio, which a spokesperson said at the time would allow it to “integrate early drug discovery and characterization more seamlessly.”

Lyell Immunopharma
April 8

Five months after acquiring the cell therapy company ImmPACT Bio, Lyell Immunopharma has disclosed that it is shutting down the Los Angeles manufacturing facility that was part of the deal and letting go of 73 people at the site. The layoffs are effective June 2, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) notice.

San Francisco–based Lyell is moving manufacturing of IMPT-314, a drug it acquired from ImmPACT Bio, to its Bothell, Washington, manufacturing facility, according to an April 1 SEC filing. IMPT-314 is a dual-targeting CD19/20 CAR T cell candidate for hematologic malignancies, including B-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Lyell had 300 overall employees as of Dec. 31, according to a March 11 SEC filing, which means the layoffs, once complete, could leave the company with around 225 people on staff.

For more details, read the article.

Spark Therapeutics
April 7

In a reorganization first divulged in January, Philadelphia-based Spark Therapeutics, Roche’s gene therapy subsidiary, is letting go of 298 employees in Philadelphia. The cuts will come in three waves starting May 9 and ending Dec. 31, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notice.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the biotech unit is cutting 337 employees total, “more than half its workforce.” In addition to the layoffs, a Spark spokesperson told the newspaper that 310 employees will be integrated into its parent company Roche but will remain in Philadelphia.

In its January financial report, Roche noted that the reorganization would involve integrating some of the biotech’s operations into the Swiss pharma’s broader pharmaceutical division. Roche estimated restructuring costs at about $341 million.

For more details, read the article.

Relay Therapeutics
April 4

Relay Therapeutics is once again laying off employees, this time affecting about 70 employees, Endpoints News reported. The move likely leaves the Cambridge, Massachusetts–based biotech with under 200 staffers, as the company had 261 employees, 80% of them in research and development, as of Dec. 31, according to an SEC filing.

A Relay spokesperson told Endpoints the layoffs mean the company has cut its annual research budget by about 75%. The spokesperson also noted that the biotech is preparing to start a Phase III registrational study of a mutant-selective PI3Kα inhibitor in breast cancer in a few months.

Relay’s recent layoffs date back to mid-2024. A spokesperson told Fierce Biotech in July that the company had cut less than 5% of its workforce. The next cuts came in the fall. A spokesperson told BioSpace in October that Relay would lay off around 10% of its workforce, affecting about 30 employees. The company’s streamlining efforts were focused on “rationalizing the tools and on streamlining the teams to enable them to be more efficient,” and final changes included the layoffs, according to an emailed statement.

Gilead
April 2

Gilead is trimming its California workforce by 149, according to a WARN Notice posted last week. The layoffs will take effect on May 27 and will affect scientific and technical services at the pharma’s site in Foster City.

When asked to confirm the layoffs, a Gilead spokesperson told BioSpace on Friday that the pharma is “continuing to further align our resources as we prepare for the upcoming launch of twice-yearly lenacapavir for HIV prevention and other near-term launches.” Affected employees can apply for another position within the company, according to the spokesperson.

In February, the FDA accepted Gilead’s New Drug Application for twice-yearly lenacapavir for HIV prevention. With the regulator’s Priority Review designation, the pharma is expecting a verdict by June 19. Investors expect demand for lenacapavir to be strong, with Jefferies writing in a February note that patients are already scheduling appointments with their doctors in anticipation of the drug.

Sail Biomedicines
April 2

Sail Biomedicines, a Flagship Pioneering-backed startup undertook a strategic reorganization initiative Tuesday that involves the termination of 12 of its staff, according to reporting from Fierce Biotech. The biotech is now down to 125 employees.

In an email to Fierce, a Sail spokesperson said the layoffs will help the company “ensure that we are appropriately resourced to meet our goals.” The spokesperson did not indicate which roles will be affected.

Sail launched in October 2023, when Flagship combined two of its other startups, Laronde and Senda Biosciences, as well as their respective platforms. Sail marries Laronde’s endless RNA drugs—a new therapeutic class composed of circular RNA molecules—packaged in Senda’s nanoparticles. The biotech is leveraging this combined technology to target a broad range of indications, including infectious diseases, rare diseases and metabolic conditions.

Carisma Therapeutics
April 2

Carisma Therapeutics, already running on a skeleton crew, announced it is cutting most of the rest of its staff, laying off 42 employees to leave it with just six people.

The move was announced in the Philadelphia-based company’s annual report SEC filing. Carisma is looking at ways to wind down completely. The remaining six employees were deemed necessary “to pursue strategic alternatives and execute an orderly wind down of our operations,” the company said in the filing. “We may elect to commence bankruptcy or liquidation and dissolution proceedings, and such proceedings may delay our wind down timeframe, increase our costs, and decrease the cash, if any, that may be available for stockholders.”

The reduction will immediately cost the company $3.8 million, mostly in employee termination benefits, which will be paid out by the end of the year.

The news follows previous layoffs in December 2024, when Carisma cut one-third of its workforce, amounting to 23 full-time employees, including three executives and research and development staff.

For more details, read the article.

Tenaya Therapeutics
April 2

In a bid to keep itself afloat into the back half of 2026, gene therapy specialist Tenaya Therapeutics on March 27 kicked off a restructuring initiative that will involve the termination of 30% to 40% of its staff.

Confirming the layoff numbers to Endpoints News on Monday, Tenaya CEO Faraz Ali said the terminations will mainly affect research and manufacturing operations as well as some administrative posts. Tenaya expects to wrap up the layoffs by the end of the year, according to Ali. The San Francisco–based biotech listed 97 full-time employees in its annual report for the year 2024.

A Tenaya manufacturing facility in California will also become dormant later this year, Ali told Endpoints, noting that while the company will retain ownership of the site, it will not see active use.

For more details, read the article.

Organon
April 2

As part of its efforts to optimize internal operations, Organon will lay off 93 employees at its headquarters in Jersey City, New Jersey, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notice. The cuts will be effective starting April 30 and will wrap up May 31.

The women’s health–focused pharma began reducing headcount in certain markets and functions in 2023 and had expected restructuring to continue into 2025, according to a Feb. 28 SEC filing. Organon noted that during the first quarter of this year, it implemented restructuring initiatives that “will drive operational efficiencies in 2025,” which resulted in it letting go of about 5% of its workforce. The Jersey City layoffs are likely part of those cuts.

As of Dec. 31, Organon had over 10,000 employees worldwide, with about 1,800 people in the U.S., according to the SEC filing.

The workforce reduction follows recent mixed news for Organon. In September 2024, the company lost exclusivity in Europe and Japan for its second-largest product, the cholesterol-lowering drug Atozet. Organon stated in its SEC filing that sales of Atozet declined 9% in 2024, due in part to the loss of exclusivity. The company expects the drug’s sales to continue to decline this year, according to the filing.

For more details, read the article.

LifeMine Therapeutics
April 1

LifeMine Therapeutics is laying off an unknown number of employees as it consolidates operations and focuses on clinical development of its lead asset, LIFE-001, Fierce Biotech reported. LIFE-001 is a long-acting calcineurin inhibitor for organ transplant patients meant to reduce organ rejection.

Gregory Verdine, CEO of Cambridge, Massachusetts–based LifeMine, told Fierce the company’s rapid advancement of the drug drove its rebalancing of capital and personnel. He also noted there’s a need to allocate capital to develop the drug in multiple immunologic indications.

LifeMine, which previously had facilities in Cambridge and Gloucester, Massachusetts, and Basil, Switzerland, is consolidating all internal operations into a new 55,000-square-foot facility in Watertown, Massachusetts, Fierce reported.

LifeMine Therapeutics
April 1

LifeMine Therapeutics is laying off an unknown number of employees as it consolidates operations and focuses on clinical development of its lead asset, LIFE-001, Fierce Biotech reported. LIFE-001 is a long-acting calcineurin inhibitor for organ transplant patients meant to reduce organ rejection.

Gregory Verdine, CEO of Cambridge, Massachusetts–based LifeMine, told Fierce the company’s rapid advancement of the drug drove its rebalancing of capital and personnel. He also noted there’s a need to allocate capital to develop the drug in multiple immunologic indications.

LifeMine, which previously had facilities in Cambridge and Gloucester, Mass., and Basil, Switzerland, is consolidating all internal operations into a new 55,000-square-foot facility in Watertown, Massachusetts, Fierce reported.

Inspirna
April 1

Inspirna is winding down its business, according to a March 31 LinkedIn post by CEO Usman “Oz” Azam. Azam did not cite a reason for the closure. However, Endpoints News reported that a source said Inspirna’s leadership decided to shut down after a Phase II trial of oral small molecule inhibitor ompenaclid did not read out positively in KRAS colorectal cancer.

The biotech has around 30 employees, according to its LinkedIn People page on the day of Azam’s announcement.

Based in Long Island City, New York, Inspira has been working to discover and develop novel cancer drugs that target key pathways in cancers of high unmet need. A first-quarter 2025 corporate presentation noted that it was working on Phase III preparation activities for a global pivotal trial for ompenaclid.

In January 2024, German pharma Merck KGaA announced a licensing agreement with Inspirna for the drug candidate. The pharma received an exclusive license to ompenaclid outside the U.S. and an option to co-develop and co-promote the drug in the country. The biotech received an upfront payment of $45 million. A Merck KGaA spokesperson told Endpoints the pharma won’t pursue further development of ompenaclid nor exercise its option in the U.S.

Arbutus
March 31

Arbutus Biopharma is letting go of 57% of its staff this quarter, bringing the Pennsylvania biotech down to a “core team” of 19 employees who will focus on its hepatitis B program, according to a March 27 press announcement.

Arbutus is also terminating all in-house scientific research and will leave its corporate headquarters in Warminster. In line with the reorganization, the biotech expects to absorb one-time costs of around $11 million to $13 million in the first quarter. Arbutus is also thinning out its masthead: Chief Financial Officer David Hastings, Chief Medical Officer Karen Sims and Chief Compliance Officer Christopher Naftzger will all step down from their leadership roles.

It is unclear how much Arbutus expects to save from these strategic moves, but CEO Lindsay Androski noted in a March 27 statement that they will help “improve our financial and operational efficiency.”

For more details, read the article.

BioAtla
March 28

Looking to cut back on costs and streamline its structure, BioAtla is reducing its headcount by approximately 30%, according to an SEC filing on Thursday.

The layoffs will cost BioAtla from $500,000 to $600,000—most of which it plans to record in the second quarter—but will extend the biotech’s runway “beyond key clinical readouts” in the first half of 2026, as per its SEC document. The resource realignment initiative will also optimize BioAtla’s expenses “to support development of its prioritized programs and set the Company up for long-term success.”

In particular, BioAtla will focus on the development of its conditionally active biologic programs, including BA3182, which is in Phase I/II development for unresectable or metastatic adenocarcinoma and mecbotamab vedotin for non-small cell lung cancer.

At the end of 2024, BioAtla had a cash balance of $49 million.

Nkarta, Inc.
March 27

In a bid to extend its cash runway, Nkarta will lay off approximately 34% of its workforce, corresponding to 53 employees.

As part of this restructuring effort, announced Wednesday, the biotech will also be suspending some future hiring and “reducing the executive leadership team by over 50%,” CEO Paul Hastings said in a prepared statement. Nkarta expects these strategic adjustments to cost from $5.5 million to $6.5 million. As of the end of 2024, the biotech had cash, cash equivalents and investments of $380.5 million which, when combined with the savings from Wednesday’s move, is enough to keep the biotech afloat into 2029.

Nkarta is focusing its energy on its allogeneic CAR NK cell therapy NKX019, which it is developing for the treatment of B cell-mediated autoimmune diseases. The biotech dosed its first patient in a lupus nephritis trial of NKX019 in November 2024, while a separate study in systemic sclerosis, idiopathic inflammatory myositis and vasculitis was started in December 2024. Preliminary data are expected in the second half of the year.

ElevateBio
March 27

Massachusetts-based ElevateBio is reportedly slashing its headcount by 17%.

Confirming the news to Fierce Biotech on Wednesday, a company spokesperson said that the layoffs will help the company “ensure long-term success and our ability to scale” as well as enable it to “focus our investments on the highest-impact capabilities” in its manufacturing business and on its gene editing technologies.

ElevateBio bagged the biggest raise of 2023, bringing in $401 million in a Series D funding round, which it earmarked for the development of its gene editing, RNA, cell and protein technologies, alongside other proprietary platforms. Despite this windfall, the biotech was forced to let go of 13% of its staff in October 2023 to better scale its business.

As per the spokesperson on Wednesday, ElevateBio now has fewer than 400 employees, though it plans to continue hiring staff “in our areas of strength throughout 2025.”

Lyndra Therapeutics
March 26

Lyndra Therapeutics, a biotech that was developing long-acting oral therapies, is winding down operations after running out of cash, the Boston Business Journal reported March 25. A company spokesperson told the newspaper that Lyndra was unable to secure the financing required to complete a Phase III safety study for its LYNX drug delivery platform.

The Watertown, Massachusetts–based biotech had about 60 employees who will now lose their jobs, and the executive team and board of directors resigned March 25, a source told the Boston Business Journal.

The news comes less than two months after Lyndra announced Adam Sayer as its new CEO. Sayer was previously chief transformation officer at Envision Healthcare. He replaced Jessica Ballinger, who the company noted had completed an efficacy study for lead asset oral weekly risperidone and established a strategic collaboration with Thermo Fisher Scientific for global clinical research and commercial manufacturing. Lyndra announced the collaboration in mid-January.

The biotech, which spun out of the Langer Lab at MIT in 2015, had raised more than $380 million through investors and partners and achieved 25 active pharmaceutical ingredient formulations, according to the company’s website.

Alector
March 26

A little over three months after announcing a plan to cut about 17% of staff in the first half of 2025, Alector has disclosed another layoff. The San Francisco–based biotech is letting go of about 13% of its workforce, which is roughly 25 people, according to an SEC filing.

Alector expects to complete most of the latest cuts this month, a company spokesperson told BioSpace. The workforce reduction, once finished, will likely leave the company with just under 170 employees. According to the SEC filing, existing cash, cash equivalents and investments should fund the biotech’s operating expenses and capital expenditure requirements through 2026.

The latest layoffs are part of cost-cutting initiatives meant to help the company align resources with strategic priorities, which include advancing its preclinical and research pipeline, according to the SEC filing. Alector disclosed the cuts about a week after announcing fourth-quarter and full-year 2024 financial results. The company’s financials for last year included a net loss of $119 million, an improvement over 2023’s $130 million net loss, as well as cash, cash equivalents, and investments totaling $413.4 million as of Dec. 31, 2024.

For more details, read the article.

Vaxart
March 21

After receiving a order from the U.S. government in February to stop work on a Phase IIb oral COVID-19 vaccine, Vaxart Inc. announced Thursday a staff reduction of about 10% as part of what it called a “restructuring plan.”

After 90 days, the company will learn if the stop work order will be canceled or extended, or if work on the COVID-19 vaccine trial will be terminated altogether.

According to a recent SEC filing, the company had 105 employees, as well as $51.7 million in cash, cash equivalents, and investments on hand as of Dec. 31, 2024.

Elevation Oncology
March 21

Following an underwhelming Phase I readout, Elevation Oncology on Thursday will discontinue the development of its claudin 18.2 antibody-drug conjugate EO-3021—and is laying off approximately 70% of its employees as a result.

The headcount reduction will cost Elevation around $3 million in one-time payments, most of which it expects to make through the end of June 2025. CMO Valerie Jansen will also be stepping down from her role effective March 31, though she will continue supporting the biotech in a consulting capacity. Elevation had $93.2 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities as of the end of 2024, enough to tide it over into the second half of 2026.

Elevation will now pivot to its HER3 candidate EO-1022, being developed for HER3-positive solid tumors. Despite the company’s cash crunch, CEO Joseph Ferra said on Thursday that Elevation is “well-positioned” to take EO-1022 forward, “while working to identify and capitalize on the best opportunities to maximize value for our stakeholders.”

TC BioPharm
March 20

TC BioPharm is letting go around 20 employees, or approximately half of its headcount, in line with its push to become a “leaner and more agile” company with a more decentralized model, the Scotland-based biotech announced Tuesday.

The workforce reduction is part of a larger shift within the company toward a CDMO model, allowing it to respond to larger production demands for future trials, as well as giving it the opportunity to look for alternative manufacturing facilities that can incorporate more advanced technologies. The layoffs will mostly affect employees in the company’s production and quality units and will be “substantially complete” by the end of the second quarter.

These strategic changes will allow TC BioPharm to generate around $4.2 billion in annualized savings, according to its press release.

CEO Bryan Kobel said in a statement on Tuesday that the layoffs are part of the company’s “shift in focus towards an outsourced production model” and a move that “will ultimately better position TC BioPharm for future clinical trial plans as well as advancements in new cell therapy manufacturing technologies.”

Cargo Therapeutics
March 20

Cargo Therapeutics is laying off 90% of its staff as it evaluates its strategic options, according to a company release on March 18. The San Carlos, California–based biotech is also stopping all development operations.

The layoffs likely leave Cargo with fewer than 10 employees, after in January it let go 81 people—50% of its staff at that time.

The latest move, according to the company, is to “preserve cash and maximize shareholder value.” CFO Anup Radhakrishnan will serve as the biotech’s interim CEO and will help navigate the company through a reverse merger or other business combination. Cargo is also suspending all development operations, including work on its trispecific CAR T candidate CRG-023 and its allogeneic platform.

Following the announcement, Cargo’s stock fell 7.5% at close of trading on March 18 but rallied to go up almost 19% in premarket trading the following
day.

For more details, read the article.

Novartis
March 19

Novartis is putting 34 more jobs on the chopping block, this time affecting employees at its Campus Point manufacturing facility in San Diego, California. According to the WARN notice posted March 13, the layoffs are in connection with the site’s closure and will be effective on June 27.

News of Novartis winding down operations at its San Diego plant first broke in July 2024. Reports at the time noted the closure would be complete by mid-2025. Novartis primarily uses the San Diego facility for producing gene therapies.

On Monday, Novartis let go of nearly 430 employees from its headquarters in East Hanover, New Jersey. The layoffs will run from June 13 to October, according to a WARN notice. In December 2024, the pharma announced it would close sites in Germany and Boston—which it obtained from its $2.9 billion acquisition of MorphoSys—resulting in a workforce reduction of 330.

Pyxis Oncology
March 19

In line with its effort to streamline operations and dedicate resources to its lead antibody-drug conjugate micvotabart pelidotin, Pyxis Oncology is trimming its headcount by 20%, the biotech announced Tuesday. The layoffs will primarily affect employees in preclinical and general and administrative roles.

According to its 10-K filing on Tuesday, Pyxis now has 44 full-time employees, nearly 80% of whom are involved in R&D work.

In December 2024, Pyxis kicked off a portfolio prioritization program, deprioritizing its IgG1 monoclonal antibody PYX-106, designed to target Siglec-15 for the treatment of solid tumors. Before being shelved, PYX-106 had shown promising tolerability, pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic profiles in a Phase I study.

In November 2023, months after acquiring Apexigen, Pyxis announced a 40% workforce reduction.

Bit.bio
March 19

Stem cell specialist bit.bio is downsizing by 25%, leaving just around 150 employees at the biotech to continue supplying human cell lines to its clients, Endpoints News reported on Tuesday.

Receiving confirmation from founder and board member Mark Kotter, Endpoints noted that the layoffs will mostly affect employees working in the company’s therapeutics unit.

Located in Cambridge, U.K., bit.bio primarily serves customers involved in research and drug discovery, particularly involving cell therapies. Its products include wildtype and disease model cells, as well as cells that are ready for CRISPR experiements. Bit.bio also provides custom cells.

In December 2024, bit.bio raised $30 million in a fundraising push led by M&G Investments and supported by funders such as ARCH Venture Partners, Blue Yard Capital and Tencent. The biotech earmarked the money to help it become a “leading provider of human cells for research and drug discovery,” according to its press announcement at the time.

Merck

March 18

Merck is shutting down its manufacturing site in Pennsylvania and will be letting go of 163 employees working at the facility, according to a recent WARN notice.

The layoffs will take place in three rounds, the first of which will run from May 16 through May 30, followed by another cycle from June through July 7. The final batch of terminations will happen “sometime in 2026,” according to the WARN posting.

Merck first signaled its intentions to close this Pennsylvania plant in early 2022, at the time estimating that the move would affect 300 employees. Last year, the pharma announced that operations at this facility would cease by the end of 2024, according to media reports.

Since then, Merck has pumped money into its manufacturing capabilities, including a $500 million acquisition of a WuXi Biologics facility in Ireland, dedicated to the production of vaccines. Last week, the pharma also unveiled a $1 billion package to expand its manufacturing site in Durham, North Carolina. The money will go toward the construction of a 225,000-square-foot vaccine facility.

Novartis

March 18

Novartis is reducing its U.S. workforce by 427 employees, according to a WARN notice posted Monday. The layoffs will take place from June 13 to October 24 this year and will affect staff at the pharma’s U.S. headquarters in East Hanover, New Jersey.

These layoffs come after the pharma in December 2024 also let go of 330 employees as part of a move to close sites in Germany and Boston that it gained from its $2.9 billion acquisition of MorphoSys. Both facilities are expected to completely shut down by the end of this year.

Novartis has been one of the industry’s most prolific dealmakers, with the pharma last month betting $3.1 billion to acquire Anthos Therapeutics and the late-stage anticoagulant abelacimab. In November 2024, Novartis acquired gene therapy Kate Therapeutics for $1.1 billion, along with its pipeline of assets for neuromuscular conditions such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy and X-linked myotubular myopathy.

During its full-year business report in January, Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan said the pharma will continue to look for bolt-on acquisitions as it plots its growth through 2030 and beyond.

Apriori Bio, Empress Therapeutics

March 18

Two Flagship Pioneering-backed biotechs are reportedly thinning their ranks. Apriori Bio, focused on developing “variant-resilient” vaccines against viruses, is letting go of 15 employees.

The layoffs were confirmed by a company spokesperson to Fierce Biotech, adding that the biotech is transitioning “from building out our platform to accelerating the development of our pipeline.” This shift, according to the spokesperson, was accompanied by a “decision to redesign the structure of our team, leading to a reduction of our workforce by 15 employees.”

At the same time, Empress Therapeutics, which seeks to utilize genetic information to produce better small-molecule drugs, is also reportedly trimming its workforce, a company spokesperson confirmed to BioSpace via email. The layoffs, which will affect 23 employees are being undertaken to “create efficiencies” as Empress’ first program moves toward the clinic, the spokesperson added.

Editor’s Note (March 18): This story was updated from its original version to include comments from Empress.

Kiromic BioPharma

March 18

Texas-based Kiromic BioPharma has put 31 staff—“substantially all of its employees”—on furlough, according to an SEC filing dated March 12.

While the furlough lasts, affected employees will be barred from working on anything related to the company, and will not receive salary or wages, though Kiromic will be required to provide “certain benefits,” as per the SEC document. The biotech has yet to specify when it expects the furlough to end, only noting that it will persist “until additional financing is procured.”

The furlough also endangers Kiromic’s Deltacel program, an investigational T-cell therapy being studied for non-small cell lung cancer. According to the regulatory filing, employees on furlough may choose to part ways with or file legal complaints against the company, which could “result in the inability” of Kiromic “to develop its product candidates, which would have a material adverse effect” on it.

Kiromic was founded in 2006 with a focus on the development of allogeneic T-cell therapies. In recent years, money has been tight for the biotech, which by the end of 2024 only had $1.14 million in unrestricted cash and cash equivalents.

HC Bioscience
March 17

HC Bioscience, which was developing transfer RNA-based therapeutics for genetically defined diseases, has shut down, Endpoints News reported. The Boston-based biotech had around 30 employees, based on its Pitchbook profile.

Leslie Williams, HC Bioscience’s co-founder, director, president and CEO, told Endpoints via email that the decision to close came after the company completed key animal studies for a hemophilia A program and assessed the data. Given the challenges in targeted delivery and other factors, the biotech decided to discontinue program development and, after considering potential paths forward and strategic factors, to wind down the overall business as well.

Launched in 2021, HC Bioscience in early May 2024 announced preclinical data for its hemophilia program, noting that its goal was to enroll a Phase I clinical trial in 2025. In September 2024, the biotech shared that it had named Simon Tsang as its chief business officer. Tsang, whose career included roles at TESARO, MedImmune and Amgen, was to focus on advancing the company’s portfolio of therapeutic tRNAs.

Sutro Biopharma
March 17

After the completion of a strategic review, Sutro Biopharma will move forward with a focus on its next-generation antibody-drug conjugates—and a much smaller headcount.

Alongside its Q4 2024 earnings, the biotech announced March 13 that it is terminating 50% of its employees and winding down operations at its manufacturing-support facility in San Carlos, California, according to an SEC filing. The company expects both processes to be complete by the end of the year. Sutro had 310 full-time employees as of Dec. 31, 2024.

The company also reoriented its developmental focus and has now deprioritized luveltamab tazevibulin (luvelta), an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) originally being developed for ovarian cancer but that Sutro had also begun testing in lung cancer.

For more details, read the article.

GRO Biosciences
March 14

GRO Biosciences began exploring strategic alternatives about six months after raising a Series B funding round and recently cut an undisclosed number of employees, including research staff, Fierce Biotech reported.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts–based synthetic biology company founded in 2016 also no longer lists two key executives on its leadership page, Fierce noted: Daniel Mandell, the founding CEO, and Christopher Gregg, the chief scientific officer.

Born out of genetics professor George Church’s lab at Harvard University, GRO Biosciences closed its Series B round in July 2024, raising $60.3 million to help advance its pipeline and further develop its platform. The company planned to use the money mostly to start a Phase I clinical trial for its lead program ProGly-Uricase, an investigational enzyme-based therapy that had been proposed for severe and refractory gout. GRO is now exploring strategic alternatives to advance that program, Fierce reported.

Atea Pharmaceuticals
March 7

Atea Pharmaceuticals let go about 25% of its workforce this quarter, a cost-cutting move that’s expected to save roughly $15 million through 2027, the company announced March 6. The Boston-based clinical-stage biotech had 56 employees, including 39 in research and development, on March 4 according to an SEC filing on that date, suggesting that’s how many employees will remain post-layoffs.

With its leaner staff, Atea is preparing for a Phase III trial of nucleotide analog polymerase inhibitor bemnifosbuvir and NS5A inhibitor ruzasvir for treating hepatitis C virus (HCV). Patient enrollment is expected to start in April. In a March 7 investor’s note, William Blair analysts said they have an optimistic view on the trial’s outcome, noting that midstage HCV trials have historically translated well to late-stage pivotal studies, specifically the sustained virologic response 12 weeks post-treatment endpoint.

Atea had cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities of $454.7 million on Dec. 31, 2024, compared to $578.1 million on Dec. 31, 2023, according to its announcement. The company reported an accumulated deficit of $364.2 million as of Dec. 31, 2024, in its March 4 SEC filing but noted it expects to fund activities into 2028.

ALX Oncology
March 6
ALX Oncology is letting go of 30% of its workers as part of “a strategic prioritization and resource optimization exercise,” the South San Francisco–based company announced Wednesday. As of September 30, 2024, ALX had 89 employees, according to an SEC filing.

Most of the laid-off employees worked on preclinical research, according to ALX, and the company will now prioritize continued development of the CD47-blocker evorpacept in breast and colorectal cancer, as well as its EGFR-targeted ADC candidate ALX2004. Due to its preclinical cost-cutting, ALX now expects its cash runway to extend into the fourth quarter of next year.

Bristol Myers Squibb
March 6

Bristol Myers Squibb will lay off 57 workers from its Redwood City, California facility next month, according to a WARN notice filed on February 26. The latest layoff, first reported by Fierce Pharma, is part of a billion-plus-dollar cost-cutting program announced last year and expanded last month. BMS laid off more than two thousand employees in 2024 in total. According to BMS’ website, its Redwood City R&D campus is focused on the tumor microenvironment.

Atara Biotherapeutics
March 5

For the second time this year and following its decision to pause two CAR T programs, Atara Biotherapeutics has divulged a roughly 50% workforce reduction, according to a March 3 SEC filing. The Thousand Oaks, California–based biotech disclosed in January it would let go the same percentage of employees.

Atara could have around 40 people left once both rounds of cuts—expected to be mostly complete by June—are done, given it had 159 employees as of Sept. 30, as noted in a Nov. 12 SEC filing. The biotech did not specify which locations the latest workforce reduction will affect. In addition to its headquarters in Thousand Oaks, it also has an Aurora, Colorado, location.

In its latest SEC filing, Atara disclosed it’s discontinuing development activities for and pausing its ATA3219 and ATA3431 programs. The move will include ending all clinical studies evaluating ATA3219, an allogeneic anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor CAR T cell therapy the company had been testing for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and systemic lupus erythematosus.

For more details, read the article.

CRISPR Therapeutics
March 3

CRISPR Therapeutics is laying off an undisclosed number of employees, Endpoints News and Fierce Biotech reported. A company spokesperson would not tell Endpoints or Fierce how many staffers are affected.

The biotech, a wholly owned subsidiary of Switzerland-based CRISPR Therapeutics AG, has its research and development headquarters in Boston and an R&D hub in San Francisco. It also has a manufacturing facility in Framingham, Massachusetts.

CRISPR in January announced it was starting the year with a strong balance sheet, citing about $1.9 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities. The company also noted its 2025 priorities will include the ongoing launch of Casgevy, a gene editing therapy it developed with Vertex Pharmaceuticals. The drug has seen strong global patient demand, and Vertex has made significant progress in activating authorized treatment centers and securing payer access, according to the announcement.

Cytiva
March 3

Cytiva, a U.K.-based life sciences technologies and services company, will let go 85 people in Westborough, Massachusetts, starting March 7, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice. The layoffs will continue through at least March 31. The company has not formally announced the workforce reduction or reasons behind it.

Cytiva’s recent news includes a January announcement that it is partnering with U.K-based Cellular Origins to provide automated robotic manufacturing capabilities for cell and gene therapies. By combining Cytiva’s manufacturing technologies with Cellular’s robotic manufacturing platform, the companies aim to help cell and gene therapy manufacturers scale up production to industrial levels without changing the process used during discovery phases or clinical trials.

Eisai
March 3

As part of a strategic restructuring, Tokyo-based Eisai is cutting 6.8% of its U.S. workforce, primarily in its commercial, medical and corporate functions, a company spokesperson on Feb. 27 told BioSpace via email. The move, which will affect 121 employees, is part of the pharma’s strategy to improve operations and ensure long-term sustainability, according to the spokesperson.

Eisai’s cuts include letting go 57 employees from its U.S. headquarters in Nutley, New Jersey, with those layoffs effective starting March 31 and wrapping up May 30, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice. The company spokesperson did not specify which other locations the workforce reduction will affect, but U.S. operations include sites in Baltimore; Exton, Pennsylvania; and Raleigh, North Carolina.

Regarding its U.S. business moving forward, the spokesperson said that “Eisai remains fully committed to the U.S. market and will continue to serve the needs of patients and their families, particularly in addressing unmet medical needs in areas such as cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and other neurological conditions.”

For more details, read the article.

Bristol Myers Squibb
Feb. 28

Bristol Myers Squibb is continuing to slim down its Lawrenceville, New Jersey, workforce, this time by 223 employees, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice. This brings the total number of those let go this year in that city to 290, as the pharma earlier this month disclosed it would lay off 67 people there.

The latest round of cuts will be effective starting May 22 and wrapping up Aug. 1. While BMS has two sites in Lawrenceville, It’s unclear if the layoffs will affect one or both of those. A spokesperson for the Princeton, New Jersey–based company had not confirmed details of the layoff to BioSpace as of press time.

Regarding the latest layoffs, the spokesperson told BioSpace via email that “We are optimizing operations across the company while prioritizing investments in innovative and transformational medicines where we can deliver the highest value for patients and shareholders. Unfortunately, there have been impacts to some of our employees as a result of these changes.”

BMS in April 2024 announced it would eliminate about 2,200 jobs by the end of last year as part of a bid to generate approximately $1.5 billion in costs savings through 2025. Some cuts were effective in 2024 and others are effective this year. Lawrenceville’s reported layoffs from those job eliminations totaled over 1,300 people.

BMS announced earlier this month that the strategic reorganization that began last year will go even deeper. The company is aiming for $2 billion in savings through 2027. Those savings will come from changes in organizational design and efforts to enhance operational efficiency, according to a fourth quarter earnings release.

Lava Therapeutics
Feb. 26

With just one product in clinical development, Lava Therapeutics is considering strategic options that could include a sale, merger or acquisition and will cut 30% of its staff, the biotech announced Feb. 25. The clinical-stage immuno-oncology company did not specify if the workforce reduction will affect both its Utrecht, The Netherlands, headquarters and its Philadelphia office.

Lava expects to complete the cuts by July 31 and to incur about $500,00 in related costs, according to a Feb. 25 SEC filing. The company had 37 employees, mostly in Europe, as of Dec. 31, 2023, according to a March 2024 SEC filing, meaning the cuts could leave the biotech with about 25 people.

As it considers its strategic options, Lava will continue enrolling patients in its Phase I clinical study evaluating LAVA-1266 in hematologic malignancies, including acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome, according to the announcement. It will also still support its pharma partnerships with Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, which involve its Gammabody platform of bispecific gamma delta T cell engagers.

Lava recently adjusted its pipeline, announcing in December that it would discontinue development of prostate cancer asset LAVA-1207. At that time, the company said it had extended its cash runway into 2027 based on a cash balance of $78.9 million as of Sept. 30. Lava had $76.6 million in cash, cash equivalents and investments as of Dec. 31, according to the Feb. 25 announcement.

Ryvu Therapeutics
Feb. 26

As part of a strategic reorganization that will extend its cash runway into the second half of 2026, Ryvu Therapeutics will cut about 30% of its workforce, the Kraków, Poland–based biotech announced Feb. 25. The move will leave the clinical-stage drug discovery and development company with approximately 200 employees as it focuses on advancing its blood cancer program RVU120 and early-stage assets.

Three Phase II studies of RVU120 are in progress: RIVER-81, a combination study with venetoclax for acute myeloid leukemia (AML); POTAMI-61, a monotherapy/combination study with ruxolitinib for myelofibrosis; and REMARK, a monotherapy study for lower-risk myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). Ryvu is suspending new patient enrollment in its Phase II RIVER-52 study of RVU120 monotherapy for AML or higher-risk MDS. The biotech expects its next data update for RVU120 in the second quarter.

Ryvu had about 46 million euros ($48.3 million) in cash and other financial assets as of Feb. 23, according to the announcement. It’s also secured approximately 22 million euros ($23.1 million) in nondilutive grant funding.

Repare Therapeutics
Feb. 26

Less than a year after cutting about 25% of its workforce, Repare Therapeutics has divulged it will axe approximately 75% of its staff, including its chief medical officer, according to a Feb. 25 SEC filing. The Montreal-based biotech had 179 employees as of Feb. 24, 2024, according to an April SEC filing, meaning that once the latest layoffs are complete, it may have fewer than 35 people remaining.

In addition to its corporate headquarters in Montreal, Repare has a location in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company did not specify in the SEC filing if the layoffs will affect one or both sites. Repare informed affected employees Feb. 24 and expects to mostly complete the reorganization by the fourth quarter.

Maria Koehler, executive vice president and chief medical officer, will depart on March 31. Repare intends to keep her on in a consulting capacity for three months after her separation date, according to the Feb. 25 SEC filing.

The latest layoffs were expected, as the company in January announced planned headcount reductions, although without offering details about the cuts. Repare also shared then that it had reprioritized its pipeline to focus on advancing its Phase I clinical programs: PLK4 inhibitor RP-1664 and Polθ ATPase inhibitor RP-3467.

For more details, read the article.

Spotlight Therapeutics
Feb. 20

Spotlight Therapeutics has shut down its operations, according to several media reports on Wednesday. The biotech had over 40 staff at its peak, according to Endpoints News.

Spotlight was built around an in vivo gene editing platform called Targeted Active Gene Editor, or TAGE, which resembles an antibody-drug conjugate but instead carries a CRISPR-Cas payload. The biotech was established in 2018 with expertise from some of the biggest names in CRISPR—including U.C. Berkeley’s Patrick Hsu—and with support from Alphabet’s venture capital arm GV (previously Google Ventures).

The promise of Spotlight’s approach attracted $30 million in Series A funding in 2020 to help leverage TAGE against immuno-oncology indications and blood disorders. But the approach failed to pan out in the laboratory. A preprint published in bioRxiv in late December 2024 showed that TAGE had underwhelming editing efficiency in mice, reaching an average of 7% even when delivered directly into their eyes.

Charles River Laboratories
Feb. 20

Charles River Laboratories is trimming the workforce at its Memphis, Tennessee, cell and gene therapy facility, Fierce Biotech reported. A spokesperson for the Wilmington, Massachusetts–based company told Fierce the layoffs came “after careful consideration of all options” and would not specify how many employees are affected.

The workforce cut won’t be the only one this year at Charles River, which provides products and services to biopharma companies. The company is closing its Durham County, North Carolina, facility and letting go 31 employees there, according to a Jan. 27 Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice. Those layoffs will be effective March 28.

Charles River has recently had a series of staff cuts. In November, Endpoints News reported following an earnings call that the company had let go more than 6% of its employees, representing over 1,300 people, since 2023. The business noted during the call it had begun to close or consolidate 15 smaller sites given lower demands for its products and services.

The company had about 20,100 employees as of Dec. 28, according to a Feb. 19 SEC filing.

Kojin Therapeutics
Feb. 17

Due to funding challenges, Boston-based Kojin Therapeutics will soon shut down, affecting 25 employees, Endpoints News reported Feb. 14. Kojin CEO Harvey Berger told Endpoints the biotech was months away from selecting a development candidate for its lead small molecule.

The company shared its plans to wind down in the coming months in a Feb. 13 LinkedIn post. In that post, Kojin noted it had made progress in developing first-in-class small molecule ferroptosis inducers for potential use in patients with cancer and autoimmune diseases. However, it added, it’s been difficult to obtain sufficient funding to move programs forward into Investigational New Drug–enabling studies and clinical trials.

Kojin launched in 2021 with a $60 million Series A round. The company has been focused on discoveries in cell-state and ferroptosis biology to develop treatments for use in patients with various forms of cancer as well as cardiovascular, immunologic, hepatic and degenerative diseases. Ferroptosis-modulating medicines can either induce or inhibit regulated cell death, creating opportunities to intervene in human ferroptosis pathways, according to Kojin’s website.

In its LinkedIn post, the biotech noted, “We are very proud of what we have accomplished scientifically in the past year and hope that ferroptosis-specific medicines will reach patients in need of better treatment options soon.”

Moderna
Feb. 17

Moderna is cutting 10% of roles—about 50 employees—within two digital departments, Fierce Pharma reported Feb. 13, the day before the biotech detailed higher-than-expected losses for the fourth quarter of 2024. The layoffs are part of Moderna’s ongoing cost efficiency efforts, according to a company spokesperson’s statement to Fierce.

The company on Feb. 14 reported total revenue of $966 million for Q4 2024, down from $2.81 billion in Q4 2023. Full-year revenue also declined, dropping from $6.8 billion in 2023 to $2.81 billion last year.

In a Jan. 6 shareholder letter, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel wrote that by the end of 2024, the company had reduced its cash operating cost by nearly 25% compared to the prior year. He also said the biotech expects to “continuously reduce annual research and development costs, through portfolio prioritization and cost efficiencies, such that by 2027 we will plan to spend approximately $1.1 billion less per year compared to 2024.”

Encoded Therapeutics
Feb. 14

To extend its cash runway and help advance its pipeline, Encoded Therapeutics has let go 29% of its workforce, primarily within its technology and early-stage research and development functions, the company announced Feb. 13. The move will allow the San Francisco–based clinical-stage genetic medicines biotech to keep operating through the third quarter of 2026.

The company has around 200 employees, according to its LinkedIn People page, meaning the workforce reduction could affect around 60 people and leave Encoded with about 140 staffers. The biotech did not say if the cuts affect only the San Francisco location or also its Research Triangle Park facility in Morrisville, N.C.

Extending its runway will help the company achieve several key milestones, including preliminary clinical safety and efficacy for ETX101, according to the announcement. ETX101 is Encoded’s lead program, designed to address the underlying cause of Dravet syndrome, a severe form of epilepsy. The company expects to complete dosing and share preliminary safety and efficacy data in the second half of the year.

For more details, read the article.

Third Harmonic Bio
Feb. 12

Third Harmonic Bio on Tuesday announced a strategic corporate realignment initiative that will include a 50% reduction of its workforce.

The move comes as the biotech prepares to push its oral KIT inhibitor THB335 into Phase II development. Third Harmonic is suspending all R&D work not related to THB335 and is currently weighing options to “maximize shareholder value,” including “through a strategic transaction and/or business combination.”

Third Harmonic had around $285 million in cash and cash equivalents as of the end of 2024, enough to support its operations through June 2024, after accounting for expenses related to THB335’s Phase II preparations and costs associated with the restructuring.

Also on Tuesday, Third Harmonic unveiled Phase I clinical data for THB335 demonstrating a dose-dependent reduction in serum tryptase levels, a biomarker of mast cell activation. The candidate was also safe and tolerable, with side effects that were manageable or resolved through follow-up. Third Harmonic is testing THB335 for chronic spontaneous urticaria.

Q32
Feb. 12

Q32 Bio will cut an undisclosed number of employees as part of a strategic restructuring that includes focusing on advancing its bempikibart clinical development program for the treatment of patients with alopecia areata. The Waltham, Massachusetts–based biotech expects the move will help extend its cash runway to the second half of 2026, according to its Feb. 10 announcement.

As part of the restructuring, the company is also discontinuing its Phase II renal basket clinical trial of ADX-097 and evaluating strategic options for its tissue-targeted complement inhibitor platform, including its ADX-097 and early-stage assets.

To further advance bempikibart, Q32 plans to extend dosing of eligible patients from Part A of its Phase II clinical trial and start dosing patients in Part B in the first half of 2025. The company expects to have Part B topline data in the first half of 2026.

Inventiva
Feb. 12

As it moves to focus exclusively on developing lanifibranor for the treatment of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis, French biotech Inventiva is laying off half its employees. The company expects to implement the workforce reduction in the second quarter, according to its Feb. 10 announcement.

Inventiva had about 115 employees on Feb. 11, according to its LinkedIn People page, meaning the layoffs could affect less than 60 people.

As part of its pipeline shift, the biotech will stop all preclinical research activities except those that support the lanifibranor program. That includes ending work on its primary oncology program meant to disrupt the interaction between YAP and TEAD that occurs along the Hippo signaling pathway.

Inventiva in early January finished patient screening in a Phase III clinical trial testing lanifibranor in patients with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH). More than 95% of participants have been randomized, and enrollment should be complete within the first half of this year, with top-line results in the second half of 2026, according to the announcement.

For more details, read the article.

Viracta Therapeutics
Feb. 7

Viracta Therapeutics announced Feb. 5 that it would shut down its operations and lay off all remaining employees, which may have been under 20 people after recent workforce cuts. The closure and terminations, approved by the biotech’s board of directors Feb. 3, took effect at 5 p.m. PST on Feb. 5.

The news marked the end of what had been a tough few months for Cardiff, California–based Viracta. In August 2024, the biotech announced a resource realignment initiative that involved a 23% reduction in its headcount. At the time, the company also decided to pause work on Epstein-Barr virus-positive (EBV+) solid tumors and instead focus on EBV+ lymphomas.

A few months later, in November 2024, Viracta announced it had laid off 42% of remaining staff in an attempt to divert even more resources into its lymphoma program. In December, the company was forced to terminate the program for EBV+ lymphoma in an effort “to maximize its cash runway” as the board searched for another route to solvency. Then, last month, Viracta was delisted from Nasdaq for failing to comply with the minimum share price requirement.

Based on a recent SEC filing that put the number of employees at 26 prior to the cuts announced in November, the company may have had around 15 people on staff prior to the company’s closure.

For more details, read the article.

X4 Pharmaceuticals
Feb. 7

X4 Pharmaceuticals announced Feb. 6 it is laying off 43 people, about 30% of its employees worldwide. The move will leave the company with around 100 staff members.

The Boston-based business is closing a “research center of excellence” in Vienna, Austria, and pausing all preclinical drug candidates, according to a statement. The layoffs and scale-back of operations will save the company between $30 million and $35 million.

The news comes less than a year after X4 got FDA approval for mavorixafor, a CXCR4 antagonist now marketed as Xolremdi, for the treatment of an immunodeficiency syndrome known as WHIM (warts, hypogammaglobulinemia, infections and myelokathexis) syndrome. At the time, the company stated that it was the first FDA approval specifically targeted for the disorder.

Last month, X4 signed a licensing deal with Norgine, a European pharma company, to commercialize mavorixafor in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. That deal netted X4 €28.5 million ($29.55 million) up front and up to €226 million ($234.29 million) in regulatory and commercial milestones.

For more details, read the article.

Bristol Myers Squibb
Feb. 7

Bristol Myers Squibb’s strategic reorganization rolls on with an additional $2 billion in savings planned through 2027 on top of an ongoing program that had targeted $1.5 billion in cost cuts by the end of 2025. The dramatic upheaval of the BMS business, spurred when CEO Chris Boerner took the helm in 2023, has been painful, with layoffs and program discontinuations.

The New Jersey pharma explained in its fourth quarter earnings release that the new savings will come from changes in organizational design and efforts to enhance operational efficiency. The goal is to become a “leaner, more efficient company while investing behind growth brands and promising areas of science,” according to the press release.

Workforce cuts will include contract positions, open roles and attrition, Endpoints News reported.

For more details, read the article.

Frontier Medicines
Feb. 6

To focus resources where they’ll have the greatest impact, Frontier Medicines, a clinical-stage precision medicine company, will cut an unknown number of employees, Fierce Biotech reported Feb. 5.

The San Francisco-based biotech, which also has a location in Boston, is streamlining operations to ensure it can “remain positioned and well-capitalized” to deliver on the potential of its pipeline, a spokesperson told Fierce via email. The company has not formally announced the layoffs, which locations they’ll affect or when they’ll be effective.

Frontier’s lead program is FMC-376, a KRAS G12C dual inhibitor. The company in February 2024 announced it had closed an oversubscribed $80 million Series C funding round to advance FMC-376. Frontier noted at that time that it had dosed its first patient in the Phase I/II PROSPER trial, testing the inhibitor in patients with G12C-mutated KRAS cancers. The company expects interim clinical data for FMC-376 in the second half of this year, according to a Jan. 9 press release.

Kyowa Kirin
Feb. 5

Japanese pharma Kyowa Kirin will cut 52 employees at its Princeton, New Jersey, location effective May 1, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice. The site houses commercial and corporate functions, clinical development and operations, supply chain and quality teams.

The company, which has not announced the cuts or reasons behind them, restructured its workforce last year as well. In August, Kyowa offered voluntary early retirement to employees in connection with its transition to becoming a global research organization that will support its focus on advanced antibody technologies and hematopoietic stem cell gene therapy. That transition included significantly reducing the pharma’s in-house small molecule drug discovery research activities and decreasing chemistry, manufacturing and controls research and quality-related activities.

In other recent organizational news, Kyowa in October announced it was setting up a new leadership structure that will be effective in March. The company is promoting Masashi Miyamoto from president to chairman and CEO, and Abdul Mullick from chief international business officer to president and chief operating officer. The CEO-COO team is meant to help support the company’s continued growth, according to the announcement.

Omega Therapeutics
Feb. 5

Despite a 2024 collaboration with obesity giant Novo Nordisk, Omega Therapeutics appears to have reached the end of its rope, with bankruptcy looming just ahead and staff cuts already happening. As its cash runway fizzles, the Cambridge, Massachusetts–based epigenomic medicines company has entered into a restructuring support agreement with its founder, Flagship Pioneering.

According to an SEC filing dated Jan. 29, Omega has until Feb. 10 to commence bankruptcy proceedings and go through a sale process with Pioneering Medicines, an affiliate of Flagship Pioneering, to potentially wind down operations. The company will provide a bridge loan of about $1.4 million upon the signing of the agreement.

Omega had previously warned investors of its cash concerns in a November SEC filing, which stated the company had only enough capital to take it into the second quarter of 2025. Omega attempted to cut costs last March when it laid off 35% of its workforce, representing more than 30 staffers based on its headcount at the end of 2023. The most recent layoffs could leave the company with around 40 employees.

For more details, read the article.

Bristol Myers Squibb
Feb. 4

As its sweeping cost-cutting initiative rolls on, Bristol Myers Squibb revealed that it will downsize its New Jersey headcount by 67, as per a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice published Tuesday.

The layoffs will take effect from April through December of the year.

BMS first unveiled its “strategic productivity initiative” alongside its first-quarter 2024 earnings report in April that year, targeting to save approximately $1.5 billion through 2025. Through the realignment program, the pharma plans to minimize management layers and prioritize key growth brands while lowering third-party expenditures. Around 2,200 jobs are on the chopping block.

Last month, BMS turned its back on two development partners—Immatics and Century Therapeutics. The pharma was supposed to work with Immatics on allogeneic T cell receptor and/or CAR T therapies, while its partnership with Century was focused on stem cell-derived natural killer cell or T cell therapies for hematologic malignancies. Both biotechs reported that BMS terminated the partnerships as part of a “portfolio prioritization” push.

Turnstone Biologics
Feb. 4

Turnstone Biologics is making major moves, cutting an undisclosed number of staff as it explores strategic alternatives and halts further development of its TIDAL-01 program, the clinical-stage biotech announced Feb. 4. The strategic alternatives could include an acquisition, merger, business combination, sale of assets, licensing or other transactions. Turnstone indicated it intends to retain employees “essential for supporting value-realization as part of its strategic review.”

This marks the second recent shakeup at the La Jolla, California–based company. In October, Turnstone announced it would cut about 60% of its employees, leaving the biotech with 30 people, according to a November SEC filing. It also disclosed it was adjusting its leadership team and shifting its pipeline to focus on clinical advancement of its selected tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy via TIDAL-01. The biotech was evaluating TIDAL-01 in multiple Phase I trials including in colorectal cancer, head and neck cancer and uveal melanoma.

Turnstone had indicated it would provide a clinical update in the first half of 2025. Now, the company has announced it’s discontinuing all clinical studies evaluating TIDAL-01. It’s also implementing further cost-containment and cash conservation measures, according to the Feb. 4 announcement.

The company had an accumulated deficit of $234.7 million and $45.3 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments as of Sept. 30, according to the November SEC filing.

Charles River Laboratories
Feb. 4

Charles River Laboratories will be closing down its site in Durham County, North Carolina, leading to the termination of 31 employees, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice published Tuesday. In a statement to Endpoints News, a company representative said that the facility was no longer “a strategic fit” for the organization.

The layoffs will be effective March 28.

In the third quarter of 2024, Charles River reported a revenue of $1.01 billion, down 1.6.% from the same period the year prior. The dip was driven by the lower performance of its Discovery and Safety Assessment unit, the company noted at the time.

Charles River is scheduled to release its fourth-quarter and full-year 2024 earnings report on Feb. 19.

Thermo Fisher Scientific
Feb. 3

Just months after disclosing it would cut employees at its Cambridge and Plainville, Massachusetts, locations, Thermo Fisher Scientific has announced a fresh round of layoffs at those viral vector sites. The Waltham-based tools and services company will let go 300 people across the two facilities, according to a Jan. 31 Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice. Those cuts will be effective March 30.

In November, Thermo Fisher disclosed via WARN notices it would lay off 160 people across its Cambridge, Lexington and Plainville sites, effective between Jan. 6, 2025, and Nov. 6, 2026. At that time, the Boston Business Journal reported the company will close the Lexington facility, transferring programs from there to Plainville. The 290,000-square-foot Plainville location provides comprehensive viral vector services, including commercial manufacturing.

The Cambridge and Plainville cuts were disclosed at about the same time Thermo Fisher announced its fourth quarter and full-year 2024 results. The company shared that while fourth-quarter revenue grew 5% year over year, full-year revenue was flat at $42.8 billion.

Fractyl Health
Feb. 3

Metabolic therapeutics company Fractyl Health announced Jan. 31 it will prioritize a pivotal clinical trial aimed at weight maintenance post-GLP-1 withdrawal while shuttering another trial and laying off 17% of its workforce.

According to an SEC filing, the layoffs amount to 22 people, indicating Fractyl had 129 employees prior to the layoffs. The savings, following $1.8 million paid out in severance and other related fees, will extend the company’s runway into 2026, according to the news release.

Fractyl has two main products in development—an endoscopy treatment called Revita designed to resurface the lining of the duodenum, and an AAV gene therapy called Rejuva, which aims to modify pancreatic cells to restore GLP-1 pathway function in islet cells. The company cites Revita as an “off-ramp” to injectable GLP-1 treatments for obesity and diabetes.

Fractyl’s shift in priorities means it is pausing development of Revita and its associated REVITALIZE-1 trial in type 2 diabetes and focusing on Revita’s pivotal REMAIN-1 trial in weight maintenance post-GLP-1 withdrawal, along with Rejuva, which is set to initiate first-in-human studies in this first half of this year.

For more details, read the article.

ImmunityBio
Feb. 3

ImmunityBio’s layoffs are continuing into 2025, with the San Diego–based biotech cutting 10 employees in California effective March 25, according to Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notices. The company has not announced the workforce reduction or reasons behind it.

The biotech had 672 employees as of Sept. 30, according to a Nov. 12 SEC filing. Given ImmunityBio let go 31 people over the course of October and November, this means the new cuts—nine in El Segundo and one in Culver City— could leave the company with around 630 staffers.

At the same time that ImmunityBio is trimming its workforce, it’s also moving forward with a new collaboration involving Anktiva, its FDA-approved immunotherapy for non-muscle invasive bladder cancer, according to a Jan. 29 announcement. The company has entered into a collaboration and supply agreement with BeiGene, a global oncology company, to conduct a confirmatory randomized Phase III clinical trial combining BeiGene’s a PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor (CPI) tislelizumab and Anktiva in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

For more details, read the article.

Rentschler Biopharma
Jan. 31

As part of its exit from the cell and gene therapy space, contract development and manufacturing organization Rentschler Biopharma will cease operations at its Stevenage, U.K., site, affecting employees there, the company announced Jan. 30. A Rentschler spokesperson told Endpoints News via email that the move could affect up to 30 people, and the Laupheim, Germany–based company will provide resources to help them find other opportunities.

The CDMO is withdrawing from cell and gene therapy as part of a long-term strategic shift so it can focus on biologics, according to the announcement.

In that press release, CEO Benedikt von Braunmühl stated, “The cell and gene therapy market has experienced slower-than-expected growth, with demand across the industry not meeting our expectations. Following a comprehensive strategic review, we are focusing our efforts on areas where we see the greatest demand and potential to create value sustainably.”

Cargo Therapeutics
Jan. 31

Cargo Therapeutics is a little lighter—on both the pipeline and workforce front—as the CAR T–focused biotech announced Jan. 29 that it is discontinuing a mid-stage study of its lead candidate and parting with approximately half of its employees. The company is letting go 81 people effective April 1, according to a Jan. 30 Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice.

Jefferies analysts in an investor note Jan. 30 called the news a “surprise disappointment” as the Phase I study had showed a 50% complete response rate and long multi-year durability of firicabtagene autoleucel (firi-cel)—an autologous CD22 CAR T cell therapy.

Cargo had 170 employees as of Sept. 30, 2024, according to a Nov. 13 SEC filing, meaning the layoffs could leave the company with about 85 employees.

For more details, read the article.

Update (Feb. 4): This entry was updated to change the number of employees let go to 81 and add the effective date based on a WARN notice published today.

Ironwood Pharmaceuticals
Jan. 31

Ironwood Pharmaceuticals on Wednesday announced a steep workforce reduction initiative that will allow it to lower its spending and “is intended to position the company for long-term growth.”

The news of the layoffs comes as Boston-based Ironwood unveiled its 2025 revenue guidance, expecting to make between $260 million to $290 million—a range that falls far below the $340 million consensus by analysts, according to SeekingAlpha. Ironwood dipped around 7% in after-hours trading Wednesday.

Approximately 50% of the company’s employees will be affected by the layoffs, mostly those working in its field force, the biotech revealed in its news release. The workforce reduction should be mostly complete by the end of June, leaving Ironwood with about 120 employees, according to a Jan. 29 SEC filing.

While the company has operations in Basel, Switzerland, it did not specify if the cuts will affect staff there.

For more details, read the article.

Zentalis Pharmaceuticals
Jan. 30

Zentalis Pharmaceuticals announced Jan. 28 it is cutting about 40% of its workforce in what it called a “strategic restructuring” as the biotech goes all in on bringing its lead candidate to the market.

According to Zentalis, the move aims to extend the company’s cash runway until late 2027, with the hope of getting beyond a Phase II data readout for azenosertib in ovarian, fallopian tube and primary peritoneal cancer.

The company had 168 employees as of Dec. 31, 2023, according to a Feb. 27, 2024, SEC filing, meaning the layoffs could leave it with about 100 employees.

Along with the restructuring, Zentalis reported mid-trial data from azenosertib from the MAMMOTH and DENALI studies on Jan. 29, showing a 5.5 month median duration of response and “no new safety signals.”

For more details, read the article.

I-Mab
Jan. 30

I-Mab will cut 27% of staff weeks after announcing a reprioritization of its pipeline to focus on a Phase I bispecific antibody.

The move will cost the Maryland-based immuno-oncology company about $300,000 but is estimated to save about $3 million overall. I-Mab expects the realignment to be completed by the end of the first quarter 2025, it noted in its Jan. 28 SEC filing. According to 2023 filings, I-Mab had 220 total employees as of Dec. 31, 2023, though most worked at a divested China operation.

The company had just under 135 people listed on its LinkedIn profile’s People page on Jan. 29, meaning the cuts could leave it with fewer than 100 employees.

The layoffs follow an announcement in early January that I-Mab will re-prioritize resources to focus on advancing lead molecule givastomig, a CLDN18.2 and 4-1BB bispecific antibody for certain metastatic gastric cancers. The candidate is currently in Phase Ib trials in combination with Bristol Myers Squibb’s checkpoint inhibitor Opdivo and chemotherapy, with data readouts expected in the second half of 2025. Other trials featuring givastomig are expected to readout in 2026.

For more details, read the article.

Affini-T Therapeutics
Jan. 29

Affini-T Therapeutics let go an undisclosed number of employees last week, Endpoints News reported. Jak Knowles, the biotech’s CEO, confirmed the cuts to Endpoints Jan. 28.

The Watertown, Massachusetts–based cell therapy company had just under 90 people listed on its LinkedIn profile’s People page on Jan. 28. However, about a dozen had “open to work” designations on their profile photos.

Affini-T is developing T cell receptor (TCR)–based immunotherapies for solid tumors. It has two autologous TCR T cell therapy programs in the clinical stage and two in the preclinical stage, according to its website. Three bispecific T cell engagers are in the discovery stage.

Endpoints noted that Knowles had previously told the publication that the biotech’s launch-round funding would take it through December 2024. Started by Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center researchers, Affini-T debuted in January 2022 at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. Two months later, it announced it had raised $175 million in initial financing.

Atara Biotherapeutics
Jan. 29

Following the FDA’s rejection of Atara Biotherapeutics’ T cell therapy for a transplant-related blood cancer and a related clinical hold, the company divulged that it will cut about 50% of its workforce. The biotech expects to mostly complete the layoffs by June, according to a Jan. 27 SEC filing.

Atara had 159 employees as of Sept. 30, as noted in a Nov. 12, 2024, SEC filing, which means the layoffs could leave the company with around 80 employees. The biotech did not specify which locations the workforce reduction will affect. Atara has its headquarters and a research center in Thousand Oaks, California, as well as a location in Aurora, Colorado.

On Jan. 16, the FDA rejected Atara’s Ebvallo, which is approved in Europe for patients with post-transplant lymphoproliferative disease who are positive for the Epstein-Barr virus, citing unresolved manufacturing concerns. About a week later, the FDA took the additional step of placing a clinical hold on the biotech’s active Investigational New Drug applications due to the same manufacturing concerns that led to Ebvallo’s rejection. In addition to Ebvallo, the hold also affected the company’s allogeneic CD19 CAR T therapy ATA3219, which it’s testing for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and systemic lupus erythematosus.

For more details, read the article.

Allakos
Jan. 28

A year after slashing about half of its workforce, Allakos announced it will cut 75% of its employees and discontinue further development of AK006 following disappointing Phase 1 results. The move will leave the San Carlos, California–based biotech with about 15 employees as it explores strategic alternatives and winds down the trial, according to the Jan. 27 announcement.

Although AK006 was well tolerated, preclinical inhibitory effects observed did not translate to clinical benefit in patients with chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU), a skin condition that causes hives, according to a statement by Chin Lee, Allakos chief medical officer, in the press release. In the Phase 1 trial, patients taking AK006 did not show significant improvement in their symptoms as compared with the placebo group.

This is not the first time Allakos has ditched a CSU candidate. In January 2024, the company announced it would halt its humanized IgG1 antibody lirentelimab. It also noted it would cut about 50% of its employees and focus its efforts and resources on AK006 and additional preclinical programs.

For more details, read the article.

Allakos
Jan. 28

A year after slashing about half of its workforce, Allakos announced it will cut 75% of its employees and discontinue further development of AK006 following disappointing Phase I results. The move will leave the San Carlos, California–based biotech with about 15 employees as it explores strategic alternatives and winds down the trial, according to the Jan. 27 announcement.

Although AK006 was well tolerated, preclinical inhibitory effects observed did not translate to clinical benefit in patients with chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU), a skin condition that causes hives, Allakos Chief Medical Officer Chin Lee said in a statement. In the Phase I trial, patients taking AK006 did not show significant improvement in their symptoms as compared with the placebo group.

This is not the first time Allakos has ditched a CSU candidate. In January 2024, the company announced it would halt its humanized IgG1 antibody lirentelimab. It also noted then that it would cut about 50% of its employees and focus its efforts and resources on AK006 and additional preclinical programs.

For more details, read the article.

Biogen
Jan. 24

Biogen will lay off an undisclosed number of employees from its research unit, a company spokesperson confirmed to BioSpace Jan. 23. The staff cuts, first reported by Endpoints News, come as Biogen’s stock languishes in a five-year low.

The company is looking to “reinvigorate” its drug discovery machinery, according to the spokesperson. “The aim is to be more agile, efficient, and effective to deliver more viable drug candidates to the clinic.”

The workforce reduction is among the first sweeping strategic moves by new research head Jane Grogan, who took charge of the department in October 2023.

Grogan, who was previously chief scientific officer at Graphite Bio, was appointed amid Biogen’s aggressive cost-cutting program announced in July 2023, which put around 1,000 jobs—or approximately 11% of the company’s headcount—on the chopping block. The layoffs are expected to continue this year, with an eye toward saving $1 billion in operating expenses.

For more details, read the article.

Notch Therapeutics
Jan. 17

To preserve cash and “explore alternate paths forward,” Notch Therapeutics will significantly reduce its workforce, the Vancouver, British Columbia–based company announced on LinkedIn Jan. 16. Fierce Biotech first reported the news.

Notch, which is developing T cell therapies for cancer and autoimmune conditions, has three locations, including one in Seattle and another in Toronto. It did not specify how many people it will let go or which sites the cuts will affect. There are 67 LinkedIn members who list Notch as their employer as of the morning of Jan. 17.

In its LinkedIn post, the company wrote, “The biotech market has faced significant challenges over the last few years, with early-stage cell therapy companies being significantly affected. Unfortunately, Notch is not immune from this environment. While we have made considerable progress, securing additional investment and/or additional partners to take our research forward remains challenging.”

Apellis Pharmaceuticals

Jan. 14
Apellis Pharmaceuticals on Monday announced that it was letting go of 40 employees. The workforce reduction is part of the biotech’s effort to prioritize its commercial efforts in the U.S.—meaning that the layoffs will affect employees located overseas.

Alongside the layoffs, Apellis also announced that its chief operating officer Adam Townsend will step down from his role effective Feb. 21 to pursue a new opportunity. Townsend has been with Apellis since 2018 and has helped “establish a world-class commercial organization,” CEO Cedric Francois said in a statement.

Apellis disclosed these organizational changes during a preview of its fourth-quarter results at the 2025 JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco. The company reported $709 million in preliminary full-year U.S. net product revenues, of which $611 million came from its geographic atrophy therapy Syfovre while the remaining $98 million were contributed by Empaveli, which is indicated for paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria.

By early 2025, Apellis plans to file for the label expansion of Empvali into two rare kidney diseases, complement 3 glomerulopathy and primary immune complex-mediated membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis.

Barinthus Biotherapeutics
Jan. 14

To cut costs as it prioritizes immunology and inflammation indications, Barinthus Biotherapeutics plans to axe 65% of its employees across its U.K. and Germantown, Maryland, locations, the clinical-stage biopharma announced Jan. 10. The cuts, which include two C-Suite members, are expected to help the company extend its cash runway to the start of 2027.

Barinthus had 130 employees—95 of them in the U.K.—as of Dec. 31, 2023, according to a March SEC filing. However, it let go of 25% of its workforce in mid-2024, meaning the latest planned layoffs may affect about 64 people, leaving the company with fewer than 35 employees.

Alongside the expected staff cuts, Barinthus is also postponing further development of VTP-300 in chronic hepatitis B until it identifies a partner, according to the announcement. It therefore won’t invest in the drug candidate beyond completion of an ongoing Phase IIb HBV003 clinical trial.

The layoffs, which would mostly affect the U.K. workforce and should be completed during the first half of 2025, are subject to consultation with U.K. employee representatives, according to a Jan. 10 SEC filing. If the cuts move forward, they include parting ways with Chief Operating Officer Graham Griffiths and Chief Financial Officer Gemma Brown, effective June 30 and April 30, respectively.

Repare Therapeutics
Jan. 14

As it reprioritizes its pipeline, Repare Therapeutics will cut an unspecified number of staff, the clinical-stage precision oncology company announced Jan. 10. The Quebec-based biotech expects that headcount reductions will help extend its cash runway into mid-2027. It wasn’t clear when the layoffs will be complete.

Repare, which also has a location in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had 179 employees as of Feb. 16, 2024, according to an SEC filing. However, in August, it announced it was letting go of 25% of its workforce, which may have left it with fewer than 135 people prior to these latest cuts.

Repare is reprioritizing its pipeline to focus on continued advancement of its Phase I clinical programs: RP-1664, a PLK4 inhibitor, and RP-3467, a Polθ ATPase inhibitor. The company is evaluating RP-1664 as a monotherapy and RP-3467 alone and in combination with olaparib, a poly-ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitor. Repare is also exploring partnerships for continued development of assets across its portfolio, including lunresertib and camonsertib, used in combination in patients with endometrial cancer and platinum-resistant ovarian cancer.

Passage Bio
Jan. 14

To help extend its cash runway into the first quarter of 2027, Passage Bio will slash its workforce by about 55%, the clinical-stage genetic medicines company announced Jan. 10. In an SEC filing, the Philadelphia-based company noted it expects to incur associated severance and exit costs of about $2 million primarily during the second quarter, indicating the staff cuts will happen quickly.

Passage had 58 employees as of Dec. 31, 2023, according to a March SEC filing, meaning the cuts could affect about 32 people, leaving the company with 26 employees. The business has two locations, one in Philadelphia and another in Hopewell Township, New Jersey. It did not say whether the workforce reduction will affect both sites.

The company’s other business moves include transitioning to an outsourced analytical testing model following an assessment of its operating needs to support advancement of its PBFT02 program, according to the announcement.

For more details, read the article.

Y-mAbs Therapeutics
Jan. 13

As part of a realignment that includes establishing two business units, Y-mAbs Therapeutics expects to cut about 13% of its workforce, dependent on whether some employees accept newly created positions, the company announced Jan. 10. The New York–based commercial-stage biopharma had 100 employees, including 63 people in research and development roles, as of Dec. 31, 2023, according to a February SEC filing. That means the layoffs could affect about 13 staffers, leaving the company with 87 employees.

Y-mAbs, which has locations in Nutley, New Jersey, and in Denmark, intends to move some roles from Denmark to the U.S. to more efficiently coordinate advancing its radiopharmaceutical platform, according to the announcement. It will also make a “small adjustment” to the commercial team for Danyelza, its monoclonal antibody for high-risk neuroblastoma in the bone or bone marrow.

Regarding its realignment, the biopharma, which is developing and commercializing novel radioimmunotherapy and antibody-based therapeutic products to treat cancer, will split into radiopharmaceuticals and Danyelza business units. This will help optimize resources and advance Y-mAbs’ novel self-assembly disassembly pretargeted radioimmunotherapy (SADA PRIT) platform programs through clinical development while also driving Danyelza’s commercial growth, according to the announcement. The company designed the SADA PRIT platform in part to improve upon traditional radioimmunotherapy by delivering high therapeutic dose while minimizing off-target exposure.

Generation Bio
Jan. 13

To support clinical development of its T cell–directed medicines, Generation Bio is reorganizing, a move that includes C-suite changes, the Cambridge, Massachusetts–based biotech announced Jan. 6. The company will cut staff in Cambridge by 20% and expects to complete that workforce reduction by the second quarter of 2025, according to a Jan. 6 SEC filing.

Generation Bio had 174 employees as of Dec. 31, 2023, according to a February SEC filing. However, it let go about 40% of its staff during the second quarter of 2024, as reported in multiple SEC filings earlier this year, including one in November. Therefore, with the latest cuts, the company may be laying off another 21 people, leaving it with 83 employees.

In its Jan. 6 announcement, Generation Bio shared it’s moving toward the clinic by deploying its cell-targeted lipid nanoparticle (ctLNP) to develop siRNA therapeutics with the goal of silencing disease-driving targets in T cells. The biotech hopes that by precisely modulating T cell activity in vivo, it can address high-value, undruggable targets involved in the inflammation and tissue damage associated with T cell–driven autoimmune diseases. It plans to submit its first Investigational New Drug (IND) application in the second half of 2026.

As part of its staff cuts, Generation Bio is parting ways with Matthew Stanton as chief science officer and Matthew Norkunas as chief financial officer. Stanton will exit midway through the year and become a scientific advisory board member, according to the announcement. Norkunas’ last day was Jan. 10, according to the Jan. 6 SEC filing.

IGM Biosciences
Jan. 13

IGM Biosciences is cutting 73% of its workforce and stopping development of two autoimmune drug candidates, the biotech announced Jan. 9. Following the news, BMO Capital Markets downgraded the Mountain View, California–based company’s shares from outperform to market perform.

The layoffs will affect 100 employees effective March 10, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) notice processed Jan. 14. That means the cuts will leave the business with 37 employees.

Regarding its pipeline, IGM is halting work on imvotamab and IGM-2644, bispecific antibody T cell engagers for autoimmune diseases. The biotech is also considering its next business move so it can maximize shareholder value, in part by evaluating “internal options as well as potential strategic alternatives,” according to the release.

For more details, read the article.

Update (Jan. 17): This entry was updated to specify the number of employees being laid off, when the cuts are effective and how many people will remain with the company based on a WARN notice processed after the tracker’s publication.

Intellia

Jan. 10

Intellia Therapeutics is reducing its workforce by around 27% as part of a reorganization program announced on Thursday. The company said it will focus its efforts and resources on high-value programs, specifically its investigational gene editors NTLA-2002 for hereditary angioedema and nexiguran ziclumeran (nex-z) for transthyretin amyloidosis. Intellia had 526 full-time employees as of mid-February 2024, according to an SEC filing.

As part of this strategic pivot, Intellia will discontinue the development of its investigational therapy NTLA-3001, which was originally being tested for alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency-associated lung disease. The biotech expects to implement the announced layoffs “over the course of 2025,” as per its news release.

As of the end of 2024, Intellia still had around $862 million in cash, cash equivalents and investments. Thursday’s realignment will cost the company $8 million in one-time expenses, but will help extend its runway into the first half of 2027.

Looking ahead to the rest of the year, Intellia expects to dose the first patients in the respective Phase III studies for NTLA-2002 and nex-z, with an eye toward becoming a “commercial-ready organization by the end of 2026,” according to its Thursday announcement.

Shoreline

Jan. 10

Shoreline Biosciences is laying off a yet-undisclosed number of employees in connection with a cell therapy partnership with Gilead subsidiary Kite, Endpoints News reported on Thursday.

CEO Kleanthis Xanthopoulos confirmed the workforce reduction in a phone interview with Endpoints, but declined to specify how many staffers would be affected. Regarding the partnership with Kite, Xanthopoulos said that its fate was still “to be determined.”

Kite and Shoreline partnered in June 2021, with the pharma subsidiary putting $2.3 billion on the line in upfront and milestone payments to use the biotech’s induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) differentiation and reprogramming platform. According to the news release at the time, the partners would initially focus their efforts on CAR natural killer cell targets, though Kite will have the option to expand the collaboration to include a macrophage program.

Under the terms of the deal, Shoreline is also eligible to royalties.

California-based Shoreline focuses on using what it calls “intelligent engineering” to produce next-generation iPSC-derived natural killer cells and macrophages, which in turn can be harnessed for gene editing.

Scribe

Jan. 9

As it gears up for clinical studies, Scribe Therapeutics on Wednesday confirmed that it will downsize by around 20%, Endpoints News reported.

The layoffs come as Scribe prepares to initiate clinical trials, CEO Ben Oakes told Endpoints. The company has yet to announce a timeline for its entry into the clinic, but Oakes noted that “the technologies we’ve built have continued to prove themselves to be so strong that we can really go quite rapidly from idea to a developable drug.”

Launched in 2020, Scribe was co-founded by Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna and leverages proprietary CRISPR-based drug design and development platforms, including those that can be used to produce genetic and epigenetic editors. Its pipeline includes STX1100, which targets the PCSK9 gene to lower elevated LDL-C levels, and STX1400, designed against APOC3 and being tested for severe hypertriglyceridemia and familial chylomicronemia syndrome.

Scribe is also partnered with Lilly subsidiary Prevail to develop CRISPR-based therapies for neurological and neuromuscular diseases and with Sanofi to advance ex-vivo cell therapies for cancer indications.

Resilience
Jan. 9

San Diego–based Resilience will lay off 120 employees at its Research Triangle Park gene therapy facility in Durham, North Carolina, effective Dec. 15, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) notice. The contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) is cutting staff based on demand in the gene therapy sector, which requires reducing headcount in some parts of its network, a company spokesperson told Endpoints News.

The Durham layoffs aren’t the only ones Resilience is making this year. The CDMO is also letting go 105 employees from its Alachua, Florida, site beginning in February and continuing through June, according to a December WARN notice.

Resilience bought the Durham facility from bluebird bio in 2021 and added the Alachua location after acquiring Ology Bioservices that same year.

Galapagos
Jan. 9

By mid-2025, Galapagos will split into two entities and cut 40% of its workforce, which is expected to affect about 300 employees across its Europe operations, the Belgium-based biotech announced Jan. 8. As a result of the reorganization, the business plans to close its site in France and decrease staff in Belgium.

The new entities will be a yet-to-be-named innovative medicines specialist and a cell therapy company that will inherit the Galapagos name. The Belgian biotech will also take back the rights to its pipeline from Gilead and discontinue its small molecules program, according to the announcement.

In the press release, Galapagos CEO Paul Stoffels called the separation into two entities a “critical step” for unlocking significant shareholder value, one that will position the company for sustainable growth and future success in its renewed focus on cell therapies.

For more details, read the article.

Cassava
Jan. 8

Cassava Sciences on Tuesday announced that it will lay off 10 employees—accounting for around 33% of its headcount—in an attempt to cut costs. The terminations will take place in the first quarter of 2025.

Aside from the layoffs, Cassava will also employ “continuing strategic expense management efforts,” including halting previously planned biomarker analyses of plasma samples from prior trials. The biotech expects to absorb around $400,000 in one-time costs related to the layoffs. As of December 31, 2024, Cassava had $128.6 million in unaudited cash and cash equivalents.

Tuesday’s announcement comes after Cassava’s Alzheimer’s disease drug candidate simufilam failed the Phase III RETHINK-ALZ trial in November 2024. At the time, the biotech disclosed that simufilam was unable to significantly lower cognitive and functional decline in Alzheimer’s patients, as compared with placebo. RETHINK-ALZ also failed its secondary and exploratory biomarker endpoints.

The readout triggered a massive selloff, sending Cassava’s shares crashing 85% in the aftermath of the failure.

CytomX Therapeutics
Jan. 8

To direct capital resources to its clinical programs and create flexibility in its cost structure, CytomX Therapeutics will cut about 40% of its employees, the San Francisco–based biotech announced Jan. 6. The exact number of people affected is 46, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) notice, likely leaving the biotech with fewer than 70 employees.

CytomX’s top strategic objective for 2025 is development of CX-2051, an antibody-drug conjugate being developed initially in advanced metastatic colorectal cancer, according to the Jan. 6 announcement. Meanwhile, the biotech has noted some hesitation about CX-904, a T-cell-engaging bispecific antibody it’s working on with Amgen. Plans for Phase Ia completion and potential advancement to Phase Ib are “pending ongoing consideration of 2025 program resourcing given CytomX current capital constraints and discussions with our partner Amgen,” according to the announcement.

For more details, read the article.

Velia
Jan. 7

Velia, a San Diego–based biotech founded in 2021, is shutting down and eliminating its workforce, Endpoints News reported. The company has 47 employees, according to its LinkedIn People page and PitchBook.

In an emailed statement to Endpoints Jan. 6, Velia CEO John McHutchison said, “We are disappointed with this outcome, and also to have to let go of our outstanding team, and we appreciate their valuable contributions at Velia. The decision is unrelated to the therapeutic potential of microproteins, our platform and our scientific progress.”

Endpoints did not report when Velia’s wind-down will be complete.

Oxular
Jan. 3

Following Regeneron’s acquisition of U.K.-based biotech Oxular, which develops retinal treatments, an undetermined number of Oxular employees are losing their jobs, Fierce Biotech reported Jan. 2. A Regeneron spokesperson told Fierce that no Oxular employees will join the New York–based biotech, although some will provide short-term consulting help with tech transfer and transition work.

It’s unclear how many Oxular employees the deal affected. While the biotech’s LinkedIn People page shows 13 “associated members” as of Jan. 3, Fierce reported the company had 20 employees upon acquisition, based on LinkedIn data at that time. The deal closed at the end of 2024, according to Fierce.

Regeneron and Oxular had not announced the acquisition as of early morning Jan. 3. However, Mark Gaffney, a former Oxular board member whose role as CEO ended in June 2024, shared the news Jan. 2 on LinkedIn. In his post, he wrote, “The ophthalmology team at Regeneron is uniquely positioned to maximize the use of Oxular’s proprietary technologies.”