A to­tal of 133 em­ploy­ees at Mer­ck KGaA’s EMD Serono di­vi­sion in Bil­ler­i­ca, MA, are los­ing their jobs as a re­sult of a re­cent re­struc­tur­ing, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny.

Most of the af­fect­ed em­ploy­ees are from the lo­ca­tion’s dis­cov­ery and de­vel­op­ment tech­nolo­gies op­er­a­tions, and a “small num­ber” were from re­search teams, ac­cord­ing to a com­pa­ny spokesper­son.

“Changes to the or­ga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture of our Bil­ler­i­ca-based re­search team were re­cent­ly an­nounced as our R&D or­ga­ni­za­tion con­tin­ues its trans­for­ma­tion,” the com­pa­ny said. “We will keep our strong re­search unit foot­prints for neu­ro­science and im­munol­o­gy (N&I) and on­col­o­gy, fo­cus­ing on se­lect­ed bi­o­log­i­cal ar­eas and sci­en­tif­ic ca­pa­bil­i­ties.”

Fierce Biotech re­port­ed news of the job cuts ear­li­er to­day.

Signs of a po­ten­tial slim­ming of the com­pa­ny were de­scribed in an an­nounce­ment on Nov. 21, which said the com­pa­ny would fo­cus on “ex­ter­nal in­no­va­tion” while in­creas­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

Mer­ck KGaA, which is based out of Ger­many but op­er­ates its health­care unit in the US and Cana­da as EMD Serono, said at the time that it planned to dou­ble down on R&D pro­duc­tiv­i­ty with a goal of one new prod­uct or in­di­ca­tion every one and a half years on av­er­age in on­col­o­gy, neu­rol­o­gy and im­munol­o­gy.

In its on­col­o­gy pipeline, its lead as­set is xev­ina­pant, a small mol­e­cule de­signed to tar­get squa­mous cell car­ci­no­ma of the head and neck. It’s cur­rent­ly in two Phase III tri­als.

The com­pa­ny is al­so re­search­ing and test­ing can­di­dates for mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis, neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­eases and lu­pus.

There have been lay­offs across the biotech and phar­ma in­dus­tries over the last few months. Most re­cent­ly, Atom­wise, an AI-fo­cused drug dis­cov­ery com­pa­ny, cut its head­count by 30% in De­cem­ber. Last week, Cyteir Ther­a­peu­tics let 70% of its staffers go af­ter it sus­pend­ed en­roll­ment for a Phase II tri­al test­ing its lead drug, CYT-0851, as a monother­a­py. And Bris­tol My­ers Squibb re­cent­ly let go of some R&D work­ers in New Jer­sey.

Roche announced another leadership shuffle Thursday morning – the head of global product strategy, Teresa Graham, will take over as CEO of Roche Pharmaceuticals in March while the company’s corporate executive committee will make a spot for Levi Garraway, CMO and executive VP of global product development.

Thomas Schinecker will take over the top spot as Roche group CEO in March, leaving his spot as head of diagnostics.

Following a promise last year to go “big and fast in breast cancer,” Gilead has secured a win for Trodelvy in the most common form.

The drug was approved to treat HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer patients who’ve already received endocrine-based therapy and at least two other systemic therapies for metastatic cancer, Gilead announced on Friday.

Trodelvy won its first indication in metastatic triple-negative breast cancer back in 2020, and has since added urothelial cancer to the list. HR-positive HER2-negative breast cancer accounts for roughly 70% of new breast cancer cases worldwide per year, according to senior VP of oncology clinical development Bill Grossman, and many patients develop resistance to endocrine-based therapies or worsen on chemotherapy.

Plant-based Covid-19 vaccine developer Medicago shut down this week with little fanfare. And its two subsidiaries, Medicago R&D and Medicago USA, are also closing their doors, according to a company news release.

The lone shareholder left standing, Japan-based Mitsubishi Chemical Group, “has determined not to make further investments in Medicago and to proceed with an orderly wind-up of its business and operations in Canada and in the United States.”

Sanofi expects its RSV antibody jointly developed with AstraZeneca will be available next season, executive VP of vaccines Thomas Triomphe announced on the company’s quarterly call.

Beyfortus, also known as nirsevimab, was approved in the EU back in November and is currently under FDA review with an expected decision coming in the third quarter of this year. The news comes as the FDA plans to hold advisory committee meetings over the next couple months to review RSV vaccines from Pfizer and GSK.