Layoffs

In this bonus episode, BioSpace’s vice president of marketing ⁠Chantal Dresner⁠ and careers editor ⁠Angela Gabriel⁠ take a look at Q1 job market performance, layoffs and administration decisions impacting the workforce.
Health and Human Services employees aren’t the only ones out of work. Thousands of private-sector biopharma professionals lost their jobs in the first quarter.
After moving the manufacturing of a CAR T drug that was part of its ImmPACT Bio acquisition to Washington, Lyell Immunopharma is closing its Los Angeles manufacturing facility, eliminating dozens of jobs there.
Roche’s reorganization of Spark Therapeutics is coming more into focus, with nearly 300 employees being let go by the end of this year. Spark also trimmed its staff in 2024.
Although U.S. full-time employees worked an average of 42.9 hours weekly last year, according to Gallup, that wasn’t true for most BioSpace LinkedIn poll respondents. A Karius HR executive discusses a few potential reasons for the longer workweeks.
FDA
Following the dramatic late-night resignation of Peter Marks last Friday, Steele, a senior advisor to the division, takes the reins in a department inside an agency beset by cuts, layoffs, and confusion.
Biopharma leaders react to the forced resignation of CBER Head Peter Marks as RFK Jr.’s promised job cuts begin at the FDA; Novo Nordisk presents mixed results from oral semaglutide in cardiovascular disease; the EU’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use declines to recommend Eli Lilly’s Alzheimer’s drug; and pharma R&D returns grew in 2024.
Organon’s workforce cuts come several months after the company’s loss of exclusivity to its second-largest product, Atozet.
FDA
The latest cuts, which are part of a larger reduction of 10,000 at the Department of Health and Human Services, were reportedly underway Tuesday, with CDER Office of New Drugs Director Peter Stein added to the list of casualties.
Cell therapy and oncology–focused Carisma Therapeutics started layoffs late last year. Now the company plans to wind down fully.
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