Ther­mo Fish­er shrinks head­count in San Diego area, ax­ing over 200 po­si­tions

Ther­mo Fish­er Sci­en­tif­ic has laid off 230 work­ers at three of its lo­ca­tions in San Diego.

Ac­cord­ing to a Cal­i­for­nia WARN no­tice, 183 Ther­mo Fish­er em­ploy­ees were let go from a fa­cil­i­ty in San Diego, specif­i­cal­ly at 6190 Cor­ner­stone Court. Two oth­er lo­ca­tions had small­er sack­ings of 32 and 15 em­ploy­ees. A re­port from the San Diego Union-Tri­bune stat­ed that the bulk of po­si­tions be­ing axed at the Cor­ner­stone site are in man­u­fac­tur­ing, with en­gi­neers and sci­en­tists al­so be­ing hand­ed lay­offs.

“Ther­mo Fish­er Sci­en­tif­ic con­tin­u­ous­ly eval­u­ates its glob­al op­er­a­tions to iden­ti­fy op­por­tu­ni­ties to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness in meet­ing our cus­tomers’ needs. In align­ment with this on­go­ing ef­fort, we have made the de­ci­sion to ad­just staffing lev­els at San Diego-area sites to re­main in line with cur­rent man­u­fac­tur­ing vol­ume de­mands,” said a Ther­mo Fish­er spokesper­son in an email to End­points News.

While no oth­er de­tails about the lay­offs were giv­en, the Union-Tri­bune did re­port that two of the sites in ques­tion came in­to Ther­mo Fish­er’s pos­ses­sion from a 2021 ac­qui­si­tion of the di­ag­nos­tic test mak­er Mesa Biotech. Both the Cor­ner­stone Court lo­ca­tion and an­oth­er one on Car­roll Park Dri­ve were as­so­ci­at­ed with Mesa Biotech.

“De­ci­sions that im­pact col­leagues and their fam­i­lies are nev­er tak­en light­ly. How­ev­er, these ac­tions are de­signed to bet­ter help us serve our cus­tomers, strength­en our glob­al com­pet­i­tive po­si­tion, and pro­vide for the long-term growth and suc­cess of our or­ga­ni­za­tion,” the Ther­mo Fish­er spokesper­son said.

In its year-end re­port, Ther­mo Fish­er stat­ed that it saw a fall of around 13% in rev­enue for Covid-19 test­ing in 2022.

The man­u­fac­tur­er still has a large pres­ence in the San Diego area, with a ma­jor fa­cil­i­ty in near­by Carls­bad with around 2,200 em­ploy­ees.

The man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor is not im­mune to the lay­off trend in the wider biotech space, as big names in the con­tract space, in­clud­ing Abzena and Emer­gent, have all com­mit­ted to ax­ing head­counts with­in the first months of the year.

Image courtesy of The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson.

Pro­tect­ing the glob­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­no­va­tion ecosys­tem – what’s at stake?

We are living in a new era of healthcare that is rapidly advancing progress impacting patient outcomes and experiences. We’ve seen a remarkable pace of transformational innovation, applied research, and advanced clinical development over the last decade.

Despite this tremendous progress, there is much more work to be done, and patients are counting on us – now more than ever – to continue that momentum. At the heart of our industry is a focus on developing and delivering medicines for some of the world’s most challenging diseases, including those that have few or no effective treatments today.

Roger Perl­mut­ter lines up deals, fresh fund­ing at Eikon; Sec­ond RSV vac­cine ap­proved; Sev­er­al biotechs flash­ing red; and more

Welcome back to Endpoints Weekly, your review of the week’s top biopharma headlines. Want this in your inbox every Saturday morning? Current Endpoints readers can visit their reader profile to add Endpoints Weekly. New to Endpoints? Sign up here.

As you come back to our website this weekend for ASCO news, don’t forget to check out our updated event lineup at BIO, which will cover everything from the current state of VC investing in biotech to top pharma R&D chiefs discussing how to make pipeline decisions.

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Bris­tol My­er­s' Op­di­vo keeps can­cer at bay in more lym­phoma pa­tients than Seagen's Ad­cetris in PhI­II: #AS­CO23

CHICAGO — In a study pitting Seagen’s Adcetris against Bristol Myers Squibb’s Opdivo in newly diagnosed patients with advanced classic Hodgkin lymphoma, a greater proportion of those who received Opdivo saw no cancer growth at one year compared to those who got Adcetris.

In addition, patients in the Opdivo arm of the Phase III trial reported reduced toxicities, according to lead investigator Alex Herrera, a hematologist-oncologist at City of Hope’s cancer cancer in Duarte, CA. Notably, the trial included more than 200 children across both arms. Generally, more than half of children with advanced Hodgkin lymphoma receive radiation therapy, but in this trial, dubbed SWOG S1826, only a handful of patients in the two arms received radiotherapy, sparing many children from long-term side effects of radiation.

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Stephen MacMillan, Hologic CEO (Photo by Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit)

Il­lu­mi­na names Ho­log­ic CEO as new board mem­ber and chair

Illumina’s board appointed two new members, including Hologic CEO Stephen MacMillan as the non-executive chair, a move that followed a proxy fight that saw shareholders oust the company’s board chair.

The DNA sequencing company also appointed Scott Ullem, the CFO of Edwards Lifesciences, to the board, according to a company statement.

Illumina’s plans to add two new board members came as Carl Icahn waged a board proxy campaign culminating with shareholders electing his candidate, Andrew Teno, over board chair John Thompson. Illumina CEO Francis deSouza survived a threat to his board seat by securing more than twice the shareholder votes than his challenger. Another Illumina candidate, Robert Epstein, was also elected and remained on the board.

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Catal­ent makes ad­di­tion­al lay­offs at In­di­ana fa­cil­i­ty

Contract manufacturer Catalent is making more staff cuts at one of its locations in the US amid dramatic corrective actions it’s been taking over the past few months.

In an email to Endpoints News, a Catalent spokesperson confirmed the company is making “a number of personnel changes” at a manufacturing facility in Bloomington, IN. While a specific number was not given to Endpoints, several local media outlets, including Indiana Public Media and the Bloomington Herald-Times, have put the number of layoffs at 150. No postings have been made to the Indiana Department of Workforce Development’s WARN notice.

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Full TIG­IT da­ta from Gilead, Ar­cus show low­er PFS rates than De­cem­ber read­out: #AS­CO23

CHICAGO — Gilead and Arcus unveiled a fuller snapshot of a Phase II study testing their experimental cancer immunotherapy combo that showed lower progression-free survival rates than its previous update, results that are likely to spark further debate over the closely-watched clinical trial.

Last December, the anti-TIGIT/anti-PD-L1 combo, positioned as a first-line treatment for non-small cell lung cancer, recorded data that drew mixed reactions. The latest analysis, presented Saturday afternoon at ASCO, included only a handful more patients than the previous update, but PFS rates fell — in one cohort by nearly three months.

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Servi­er’s vo­rasi­denib stalls pro­gres­sion of brain can­cer by 61% in piv­otal PhI­II IN­DI­GO study: #AS­CO23

An experimental pill from Servier Pharmaceuticals showed potentially practice-changing results in a narrow group of brain cancer patients, cutting the risk of their cancers progressing by 61%, according to a late-stage clinical trial.

The drug, vorasidenib, is a precision medicine that only works in certain people whose cancer carries mutations in one of two genes called IDH1/2. Doctors hope that the therapy will delay the need for chemotherapy or radiation, which are often used to combat relapses in patients who’ve previously undergone surgery to remove brain tumors.

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GSK pro­motes rou­tine im­mu­niza­tions for adults amid post-pan­dem­ic vac­cine back­slide

GSK launched a new initiative on Thursday and committed up to $1 million in grant funding to improve adult routine vaccination rates.

While the pandemic spotlight was trained on the race for novel Covid-19 vaccines, other routine vaccination rates plummeted, raising concerns that missed doses may put children and even some adults at risk of preventable diseases such as measles or shingles. The World Health Organization last year reported the largest drop in childhood vaccinations in roughly three decades.

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Tammie Denyse speaks up about Black women and breast cancer inequity in Gilead's first TikTok campaign. (Gilead Sciences)

Gilead joins Tik­Tok with on­col­o­gy aware­ness cam­paign fea­tur­ing di­verse group of can­cer ad­vo­cates

Gilead Sciences is taking over the opening page on TikTok for the next two weeks. A Gilead-sponsored video, featuring cancer advocates talking about equity and other issues, will show up as the landing page, called the “For You” page, for millions of TikTok watchers.

The cancer awareness campaign will begin on Monday and run for two weeks, a Gilead spokesperson told Endpoints News. The TikTok ad debut is timed around the ASCO medical conference, but the work is aimed more broadly at healthcare professionals, as well as people touched by cancer and people interested in advancing Black and general health equity.

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