Dive Brief:
- Gene therapy developer UniQure will shrink its workforce by 65%, cutting 300 roles across the company alongside the previously announced sale of its Lexington, Massachusetts, manufacturing facility.
- Reporting second quarter earnings Thursday, the biotechnology company said the layoffs would reduce its cash burn by 40%, or $75 million, per year. UniQure expects to complete the restructuring by the fourth quarter.
- Pierre Caloz, UniQure’s chief operating officer, is also departing as a result of the facility sale, which was announced on July 1.
Dive Insight:
UniQure, which developed and then out-licensed the hemophilia gene therapy Hemgenix, has been under pressure to reduce costs.
In October, the company halted a slate of research projects and announced plans to lay off 114 employees. It also closed a laboratory in Lexington.
The more recent sale of its manufacturing plant in Lexington gave it $25 million in stock and debt, as well as allowed it to transfer many of the people who worked there to buyer Genezen.
The latest cuts are designed to help UniQure funnel resources toward its pipeline, including gene therapies for Huntington’s disease and temporal lobe epilepsy. Shares in the company recently rose on positive early-stage data that it reported in July.
As of June 30, UniQure had $524 total in cash and investments, which it expects to fund operations through the end of 2027.
In the wake of Caloz’s departure, Amin Abujoub, previously chief quality officer at UniQure, has been appointed as chief technical operations officer.
