Grit­stone bio lays off 40% of staff fol­low­ing Covid vac­cine tri­al de­lay

Vac­cine biotech Grit­stone bio is cut­ting its head­count by about 40% af­ter it an­nounced ear­li­er this month that the Phase IIb tri­al of its next-gen Covid-19 vac­cine has been de­layed.

On Feb. 12, the com­pa­ny said that the start of the 10,000-pa­tient study for the Covid vac­cine would be de­layed un­til the fall of 2024. It was sup­posed to be­gin in the first quar­ter of this year with up to $433 mil­lion in fund­ing from the US De­part­ment of Health and Hu­man Ser­vices, the Ad­min­is­tra­tion for Strate­gic Pre­pared­ness and Re­sponse and the Bio­med­ical Ad­vanced Re­search and De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (BAR­DA).

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