Genentech is letting go of 118 employees in South San Francisco. The news comes about two months after the biotech ended a partnership with Adaptive Biotechnologies.
For the third time this year, Roche subsidiary Genentech is laying off employees at its South San Francisco headquarters. According to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act notice, 118 staffers will lose their jobs effective Nov. 28.
Genentech disclosed layoffs of 87 employees in July and 143 in May. The total number of its staff let go in South San Francisco this year is now 348.
The news comes about two months after the biotech ended its partnership with Adaptive Biotechnologies. In August, Adaptive disclosed that Genentech is walking away from a cancer-focused cell therapy collaboration worth potentially $2 billion, effective in February. The companies had been working to advance T cell receptor (TCR)–based therapies for cancer. However, in 2023, Roche pulled back from TCR therapies, and in August 2024, Genentech shut down its cancer immunology unit.
Genentech has now let go of over 800 employees since April 2024. Last year’s cuts included a 3% workforce reduction affecting around 400 employees that came just days before the biotech announced it had ended a strategic collaboration and licensing agreement with Adaptimmune Therapeutics. The companies had been developing allogeneic T cell therapies in a deal potentially worth more than $3 billion, plus royalties.
In more recent news, Genentech this week announced positive Phase III results for a study of Gazyva in children and young adults with idiopathic nephrotic syndrome, a severe and chronic kidney disease. The biotech noted that the study met its primary endpoint, with more patients achieving sustained complete remission at one year with the drug compared with mycophenolate mofetil. Earlier this month, the FDA approved Gazyva in the U.S. for treatment of adults with active lupus nephritis who are receiving standard therapy. Lupus nephritis is a condition that damages the kidneys and harms their ability to function.
Correction (Oct. 29): This article was updated to correct the name of the city where layoffs took place to South San Francisco (instead of San Francisco). BioSpace regrets the error.
