Cellares, a well-funded biotechnology startup focused on cell therapy manufacturing, plans to lay off 100 people, according to a regulatory filing.
Just two months after topping off a $327 million Series D round, the South San Francisco company has lost a partnership with an unspecified pharmaceutical partner and will restructure as a result, CEO Fabian Gerlinghaus wrote in a LinkedIn post.
A spokesperson declined to provide the name of the partner, but wrote in an email to BioPharma Dive that Cellares has “more than doubled the number of customers we serve since the beginning of the year.”
Cellares bills itself as an “integrated” development and manufacturing organization for cell therapies, and claims its automated “Cell Shuttles” can help speed up the production of these treatments. The approach has drawn the interest of multiple drugmakers, among them Bristol Myers Squibb, Sonoma Biotherapeutics and Cabaletta Bio. The Bristol Myers deal involved $380 million in total payouts.
The companies still aligned with Cellares “have reiterated their commitment to working with Cellares, and several are already discussing additional programs, accelerating existing collaborations, and advancing with us toward commercial manufacturing,” Gerlinghaus wrote on LinkedIn.
The affected Cellares employees will be terminated by Oct. 20, and are primarily software engineers, quality control and design staff and manufacturing specialists, according to a WARN Act filing with California's Employment Development Department.
Cellares’ primary manufacturing facility is in New Jersey, and the company is building new plants in Europe and Japan. At the end of June, it said it was the only cell therapy manufacturer selected for the Food and Drug Administration’s “pre-check” pilot program, which is supposed to streamline regulatory reviews and help quickly build manufacturing facilities in the U.S.
Cellares joins at least one other cell therapy manufacturer to slash its workforce this year. Germany-based Evotec said in March it would let go of 800 employees in its second round of layoffs since 2024.
