Massachusetts
Biotechs that announced series B financing this year and are expanding their workforces include one that raised $2.1 billion and has partnerships with Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson and Novartis.
As pharmas reshore manufacturing, they’re squaring off with each other to find the right personnel to staff up their plants. That task is challenging given the limited talent pool, difficulty filling critical roles and, in some cases, competition from data centers.
As biopharma job openings rose this year, opportunities were greatest in Massachusetts and California and in the science/R&D and clinical disciplines, according to BioSpace data. Several other locations and functions have also been going strong.
Last month, biotech and pharma companies making or planning workforce cuts included three whose reductions will more than halve their workforces. Blueprint Medicines’ layoffs will affect the most employees.
Contract development and manufacturing organizations looking to do business with biopharmas include Lonza, which has more than 30 sites, and Samsung Biologics, which recently announced a planned acquisition of another CDMO.
Seven of the 10 companies participating in the fall cohorts of MassBio and SCbio’s Drive program are based in the United States, including four in Massachusetts.
TScan Therapeutics is looking for strategic partnerships for its heme and autoimmune programs while working to advance two in vivo T cell therapy candidates into investigational new drug–enabling studies.
After barely growing in 2024, biopharma employment in Massachusetts dropped 3.1% last year. R&D jobs dipped even more, by 3.9%. Biomanufacturing, however, went up.
Workforce cuts this year at seven companies involved in recent mergers and acquisitions will cost over 1,300 employees their jobs. Affected businesses include Arcellx and Tourmaline Bio, acquired by Gilead Sciences and Novartis, respectively.
Biopharma professionals sometimes find themselves out of jobs when employers want to bring staff back into the office, as recently seen at biotech EMD Serono and Exelixis.
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