Layoffs
Well-financed startup Tome is winding down operations just as two new companies, Borealis Biosciences and GondolaBio, are launching. Meanwhile, in the midst of already tense relations with China, House lawmakers raise the alarm about U.S. companies working with the country’s military on trials.
The Switzerland layoffs are the latest in Bayer’s 2024 workforce reductions, which already include 1,500 people and nearly half of the executive leadership team.
Tome Biosciences, a gene editing startup that launched in late 2023 with $213 million in funding, will eliminate 131 positions in November, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Act notice.
Aadi Bioscience expects that pipeline adjustments and the workforce reduction will extend its cash runway into at least the second half of 2026.
Lykos will lay off approximately three-quarters of its staff amidst a reorganization aimed at helping the company complete a regulatory resubmission for its MDMA-assisted therapy.
Workforce reductions for the first half of August outpace May, June and July’s monthly totals.
To avoid being laid off, a third of biopharma professionals would take a pay cut and nearly a quarter would take a demotion, according to BioSpace LinkedIn polls. We spoke to several professionals about their layoff experiences and what they would—and wouldn’t—have done to keep their jobs.
The layoffs will help extend the company’s cash runway from the second half of 2026 into 2028.
The layoffs are intended to help provide an operating runway into the fourth quarter of 2026.
FibroGen expects its headcount reduction, which is tied to eliminating 75% of its U.S. workforce, to be mostly complete by the end of the first quarter of 2025.
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