At least 63 biopharma layoff rounds were conducted in the first quarter of this year, with cell and gene biotechs accounting for nearly a third of those rounds. The cuts were accompanied by eight biotech closures as the sector faces deep uncertainty tied to recent geopolitical changes.
For the first three months of 2025, the most layoff rounds were reported in March, with at least 26 workforce reductions occurring, according to Fierce Biotech’s layoff tracker. This compares to 18 recorded in February and 19 for January.
When compared to the same quarters in other years, the most recent numbers are a bit higher. Last year, Fierce reported 58 biopharma layoffs in the first quarter, with 57 rounds in 2023 and 30 in 2022.
Though it’s impossible to fully capture the human impact of layoffs, at least 1,965 people lost their jobs from the 20 companies reporting numbers. The remaining biopharmas either reported layoffs as a percentage of the total workforce or didn’t share any figures regarding how many staff members would be affected.
Of the 34 times that companies did provide a percentage of staff receiving pink slips, the average reduction size was 43%.
Closing the doors
Notably, eight biotechs shuttered in the first quarter of this year.
Right out of the gates was Velia Therapeutics, a San Diego-based biotech that announced Jan. 9 plans to wind down. Velia was led by former head of Gilead’s R&D John McHutchison, M.D., and was working to advance a discovery platform designed to “mine the dark matter of the human proteome for novel therapeutic targets.”
Velia said the shuttering was “unrelated to the therapeutic potential of microproteins, our platform and our scientific progress.”
A month later, oncology biotech Viracta Therapeutics followed suit, with an expected one-time payment of $100,000 tied to the termination of its remaining workforce.
The precision oncology company was delisted from Nasdaq on Feb. 4 after failing to comply with the $1-per-share minimum requirement.
In early January, Viracta had discontinued a phase 2 lymphoma trial and began exploring strategic alternatives. The decision followed two layoff rounds in 2024, one of which sent 42% of staffers packing and an earlier wave that included 23% of the company’s employees at the time.
Less than two weeks later, Boston biotech Kojin Therapeutics shuttered, citing difficulty securing enough money to push forward the company’s small molecules into investigational new drug (IND)-enabling studies and clinical trials.
Launched in 2021 with $60 million, the cancer- and autoimmune-focused biotech said the fundraising challenges were in part due to “a lack of current investor interest in financing pre-clinical therapeutic companies, especially based on novel biology and for cancer.”
Then CRISPR-based Spotlight Therapeutics dimmed its lights before ever entering the clinic, followed by Arch-backed HC Bioscience, a preclinical transfer RNA company.
Most recently, Lyndra Therapeutics said it was winding down, a move that will result in 60 employees being laid off. Lyndra was spun out of Moderna co-founder Robert Langer’s lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2015 and was working to create long-acting oral versions of medicines.
The company raised $101 million in 2023 and said at the time that Lyndra would use the funds to advance a long-acting version of schizophrenia drug risperidone.
Lyndra later announced that its weekly version of risperidone delivered the same medicine levels as the daily version in a phase 3 trial with 90 patients, with a pivotal safety study slated for the first half of 2025. However, the biotech was unable to gather enough cash to run the late-stage study, prompting the closure.
And in the final hour, Carisma Therapeutics and Inspirna both announced that they were winding down. Yesterday, Inspirna’s CEO Usman “Oz” Azam, M.D., shared on LinkedIn that the cancer company was shuttering after more than 10 years.
Inspirna was founded from science out of Rockefeller University that targets key pathways in cancer progression using a microRNA-based target discovery platform. CEO Azam didn't provide further details about why the biotech is closing nor the exact number of staffers affected by the private company’s decision.
Carisma is also closing, a decision that became public March 31. The macrophage-focused cell therapy company is laying off 40 employees, keeping six staffers on to help evaluate strategic alternatives and "execute an orderly wind down," according to Carisma. The closure follows a year of both pipeline and workforce cuts, with CEO Steven Kelly saying the most recent decision "has the potential to maximize the value of our science and other assets given the challenging funding environment.”
The cell and gene therapy reckoning
And then there’s cell and gene. The field suffered enormously this quarter, with 20 of the 63 layoff rounds coming from cell and gene companies, representing about 31% of all industry layoffs this past quarter.
Notably, Cargo Therapeutics implemented two layoff rounds in the span of three months. After halving its workforce in January, the CAR-T biotech went on to discontinue development of its allogeneic platform and lay off 90% of its remaining staffers.
The company, which launched in 2022 with $200 million and debuted on the public market a year later with a $291 million IPO. The financings had fueled development of firi-cel, an autologous CD22 CAR-T cell therapy designed to treat advanced or relapsed large B-cell lymphoma.
In January, Cargo shelved firi-cel after a phase 2 trial revealed low efficacy and serious side effects, including 18% of patients developing developed grade 3 or higher immune effector cell-associated hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis-like syndrome. An undisclosed number of patients in the trial died from the condition.
Also significant is Galapagos’ split. In early January, the company divided itself into two, parting with 40% of its employees and a long-standing partnership with Gilead, as well.
The move leaves the entity retaining the Galapagos name with the biotech’s previous portfolio of cell therapies.
The other company, currently being referred to as “SpinCo,” will focus on “building a pipeline of innovative medicines through transformational transactions,” according to a Jan. 8 release.
The sector has struggled as a whole, with other recent events—such as Roche’s overhaul of its Spark gene therapy unit or Pfizer pulling FDA-approved hemophilia B gene therapy Beqvez off the market—underscoring the shift in how the industry views the therapies.
Meanwhile, the upcoming departure of Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), has sent stormy waves through the space. Marks is known for playing a key role in the sector, with several advocacy groups voicing concerns about the effect his departure may have on advanced therapeutics and the biotechs behind them.
An overall sense of unease
The private sector’s layoffs come amid the backdrop of mass workforce reductions across federal health agencies and research funding cuts.
Since President Donald Trump started his second term, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced efforts to downsize the agency by 20,000 people, from 82,000 workers to 62,000.
These cuts impact the FDA, the National Institutes of Health and the CDC, among many others.
Freezes and terminations of federal funding money have left numerous biotechs, universities and agencies scrambling as financing for science that leads to new medicines dries up.
Plus, market volatility related to the plethora of changes President Trump has implemented has impacted the sector’s stocks, with biotech unable to insulate itself from the broader macroenvironment.
The industry, which had largely hoped Trump's return to the White House would spur better market conditions, is now left asking: What will happen next?