Much ink has been spilled over the con­tin­u­ing wave of lay­offs hit­ting the biotech in­dus­try, and that doesn’t look to be stop­ping any­time soon.

Finch Ther­a­peu­tics re­port­ed Tues­day morn­ing that it would be lay­ing off 37 staffers, or ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20% of its work­force, per an SEC fil­ing. The de­ci­sion to cut costs comes about a month af­ter Finch said the FDA had placed a treat­ment for C. dif­fi­cile in­fec­tions on par­tial clin­i­cal hold, and rough­ly three weeks af­ter paus­ing its he­pati­tis B pro­gram.

“This was a dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion; how­ev­er, we be­lieve this de­ci­sion will put us in a stronger fi­nan­cial po­si­tion to ex­e­cute up­on our strate­gic pri­or­i­ties and con­tin­ue to de­liv­er on our mis­sion to har­ness the mi­cro­bio­me to serve pa­tients and their fam­i­lies,” CEO Mark Smith said in a pre­pared state­ment.

Finch shares $FNCH, al­ready down 64% since the start of the year, showed no change as the mar­ket opened Tues­day.

Tues­day’s lay­offs may have been in the works fol­low­ing a rough March, which saw the FDA hold and the he­pati­tis B pause. Reg­u­la­tors had re­quest­ed Finch pro­vide more in­for­ma­tion on its screen­ing pro­to­cols for C. dif­fi­cile in­fec­tions, the biotech said, re­port­ed­ly point­ing to is­sues at a man­u­fac­tur­er Finch had ac­quired while a Phase II study was un­der­way.

The man­u­fac­tur­er, Open­Bio­me, was placed on hold in late 2019, but Finch was al­lowed to con­tin­ue us­ing donor sam­ples from be­fore then in its study. The hold was re­leased in Jan­u­ary 2021, and Finch bought the com­pa­ny’s man­u­fac­tur­ing tech two months lat­er. Finch be­gan dos­ing Phase III pa­tients last No­vem­ber, but the FDA re­turned with ques­tions this past Jan­u­ary.

At the time it re­port­ed the hold, Finch al­so not­ed that some pa­tients were dosed in this study while the hold was in ef­fect. The com­pa­ny says it’s re­view­ing the mat­ter.

The biotech fol­lowed up at the end of March say­ing it had re­spond­ed to the hold no­tice and ob­tained ad­di­tion­al feed­back from the agency. Per Finch, ex­ecs not­ed reg­u­la­tors want­ed changes to the Phase III test­ing al­go­rithm used to di­ag­nose sus­pect­ed re­in­fec­tions, as well as more in­fo on the tri­al’s sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis plan. The com­pa­ny is ex­pect­ing “at least” a one quar­ter de­lay.

Finch’s March 31 up­date al­so re­vealed the biotech would be paus­ing he­pati­tis B ac­tiv­i­ties “fol­low­ing a strate­gic re­view” of its pipeline. The move will al­low Finch to fo­cus on its C. dif­fi­cile and autism spec­trum dis­or­der pro­grams.

The biotech, much like its in­dus­try com­pa­tri­ots, falls on hard times as 2022 is yet to let up on the sec­tor. Finch’s lay­offs come as part of a broad­er reshift­ing with­in the biotech space fol­low­ing record ac­tiv­i­ty dur­ing the pre­vi­ous two years.

Much of the down­turn has been cap­tured in the XBI, an in­dex mea­sur­ing the in­dus­try’s per­for­mance as a whole. It’s down about 30% on the year and down al­most 50% from its peak in Feb­ru­ary 2021. And some­times, the move­ments ap­pear to be hap­pen­ing ran­dom­ly: on Mon­day, for ex­am­ple, the XBI fell 5% de­spite the lack of ma­jor news.

Eli Lilly has succeeded in its attempt to get the first non-covalent version of Bruton’s tyrosine kinase, or BTK, inhibitors to market, pushing it past rival Merck.

The FDA gave an accelerated nod to Lilly’s daily oral med, to be sold as Jaypirca, for patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma.

The agency’s green light, disclosed by the Indianapolis Big Pharma on Friday afternoon, catapults Lilly into a field dominated by covalent BTK inhibitors, which includes AbbVie and Johnson & Johnson’s Imbruvica, AstraZeneca’s Calquence and BeiGene’s Brukinsa.

Celularity has warned “a substantial portion” of its employees that layoffs could be looming in the face of a reprioritization effort. In the same breath, it touted some of its very early next-gen candidates in degenerative diseases and oncology.

“While Celularity is hopeful that there will be no need to substantially reduce its headcount, the notifications were provided in accordance with applicable law and to maintain full transparency with its employees,” the news release reads, in part.

The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) voted unanimously in favor of “harmonizing” Covid vaccine compositions, meaning all current vaccine recipients would receive a bivalent vaccine, regardless of whether they’ve gotten their primary series.

The vote marks an effort to clear up confusion around varying formulations and dosing schedules for current primary series and booster vaccines, as well as “get closer to the strains that are circulating,” according to committee member Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.