With the latest layoffs, Novartis expects to let go of around 800 employees by the end of 2028. More than half of the cuts have been at the company’s East Hanover, New Jersey, location.
In its largest round of layoffs this year, Novartis is trimming its East Hanover, New Jersey, workforce for a fourth time, letting go of 322 employees and bringing the total number of affected people at that location to 572. The cuts are effective Oct. 2, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act notice.
The first three rounds of layoffs at the Swiss pharma’s East Hanover location were disclosed in March, April and May, affecting 114, 60 and 76 employees, respectively. All cuts are effective this year.
In total, Novartis has announced or disclosed in 2026 that it’s letting go of at least 792 employees. In May, the pharma confirmed to BioSpace that it’s laying off a “select number” of staff within its biomedical research association. That same month, the company announced it will shut down a production site in Wehr, Germany, by the end of 2028, eliminating 220 jobs. That location, which makes solid oral dosage forms such as tablets and capsules for mostly established Novartis products, is no longer competitive, the company noted in its announcement.
The pharma also cut its workforce in 2025, laying off 1,069 employees, including 485 in East Hanover, over a multiyear period.
Meanwhile, Novartis is making major moves, most recently in the cancer space. This week, the pharma announced an acquisition of Myricx Bio that’s worth up to $1.5 billion. As part of the deal, Novartis will absorb Myricx’s two lead antibody-drug conjugate programs and a payload platform.
Last month, Novartis teamed up with Scorpion Therapeutics spinout Antares Therapeutics in a deal that could top $1.9 billion. The companies are aiming to create new precision medicines for hard-to-treat cancers.
In March, Novartis dropped $2 billion for Pikavation Therapeutics, a subsidiary of Synnovation Therapeutics that owns a pipeline of PI3Kα programs, including a breast cancer drug candidate in Phase 1/2 development.
