Layoffs

Novo Nordisk and Heartseed first partnered in 2021 to develop an investigational cell therapy for heart failure.

After parting with 50% of its employees earlier this year, Sutro Biopharma will lay another third of its staff in a restructuring effort geared toward reaching key inflection points.

The AAV pullback comes amid Biogen’s aggressive cost-cutting campaign, which put some 1,000 jobs on the chopping block with the goal of generating $1 billion in savings by 2025.

The company was awaiting $70 million from HealthCare Royalty but missed an agreed-upon payment condition.

The FDA is hoping to repurpose GSK’s Wellcovorin for cerebral folate deficiency; Pfizer acquired fast-moving weight-loss startup Metsera for nearly $5 billion after suffering a hat trick of R&D failures; psychedelics are primed for M&A action and Eli Lilly may be next in line; RFK Jr.’s revamped CDC advisory committee met last week with confounding results; and Stealth secured its Barth approval.

This year, Novo Nordisk and Merck announced significant layoffs, with Novo planning to axe about 9,000 employees and Merck projecting it could let go of roughly 6,000. Meanwhile, Bayer, Bristol Myers Squibb, Novartis and Pfizer have also made noteworthy cuts.

Both BMS and Novo Nordisk have, in recent months, announced steep layoffs as they strive to cut back on costs.

Moving forward, Innate will focus on the clinical development of its antibody-drug conjugate IPH4502, the lymphoma candidate lacutamab and the AstraZeneca-partnered monalizumab.

The White House is clamping down on pharma’s ability to buy new molecules from Chinese biotechs; Sanofi, Merck and others abandon the U.K. after the introduction of a sizeable levy; Novo CEO Maziar Mike Doustdar lays off 9,000 while the company presents new data at EASD; Capsida loses a patient in a gene therapy trial; and CDER Director George Tidmarsh walks back comments on FDA adcomms.

The biopharma job market remains challenging, based on BioSpace data. In August, job postings live on the website dropped 32% year over year. In addition, during the first eight months of 2025, over 26,000 people were laid off or projected to be laid off.