BioNTech
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For the second time in 2026, the number of biopharma professionals affected by made or projected workforce reductions rose year over year. In May, layoffs spiked nearly 50%, mainly due to Takeda and BioNTech axing a combined 6,360 employees.
Practice-changing data in lung cancer, prostate cancer and more were on display over the weekend at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago. Plus, early readouts on assets that could reshape the cancer landscape.
Far fewer companies are letting employees go so far in 2026 compared to 2025, but the number of people affected is trending up, especially this month, according to BioSpace tallies.
While average job postings live on BioSpace have increased year over year for nearly every month of 2026, the number of employees affected by made or planned layoffs by the end of that same period nearly matched what was seen in 2025.
The action affects BioNTech sites in Germany and Singapore, where the company expects to have excess capacity.
Trastuzumab pamirtecan, being developed under a 2023 partnership between BioNTech and DualityBio, elicited a 44.1% overall response rate in a Phase 2 trial.
BioNTech envisioned the site making hundreds of millions of vaccines a year, but has since shifted its pipeline to other modalities while mRNA technology continues to face headwinds in the U.S.
COVID-19 partners Pfizer and BioNTech have been unable to recruit healthy adults aged 50 to 64 fast enough to deliver relevant post-marketing data. Moderna is apparently also facing enrollment challenges.
The move comes as BioNTech shifts to being a multiproduct commercial biotech, allowing Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci to transition back into research on next-generation mRNA therapeutics.
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