More than two dozen em­ploy­ees in man­u­fac­tur­ing and ad­min­is­tra­tive roles at UMass Chan Med­ical School will be let go in late April.

The uni­ver­si­ty’s Mass­Bi­o­log­ics unit no­ti­fied 26 em­ploy­ees re­cent­ly. Af­fect­ed em­ploy­ees will re­ceive sev­er­ance and be of­fered out­place­ment ser­vices, a spokesper­son said to End­points News in an emailed state­ment. The em­ploy­ees can ap­ply for open po­si­tions else­where in the med­ical school, the spokesper­son added.

Mass­Bi­o­log­ics cit­ed “mar­ket-re­lat­ed fac­tors that are cur­rent­ly im­pact­ing the life sci­ences and man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors” as the rea­son­ing for the head­count culls. The bio­phar­ma in­dus­try, in­clud­ing some man­u­fac­tur­ers, has been hit by a wave of lay­offs this year and in 2022, forc­ing dozens of com­pa­nies to re­fo­cus their op­er­a­tions.

The man­u­fac­tur­er has a long his­to­ry in the state of Mass­a­chu­setts, dat­ing to 1894, and has been in­volved in vac­cines for small­pox, tetanus, per­tus­sis, ty­phoid and oth­ers.

Microcap biotech Seelos Therapeutics is halting enrollment of its study in spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (also known as Machado-Joseph disease) because of “financial considerations,” and in order to focus on other studies, the company said today, adding that the pause would be temporary.

The study will continue with the patients who have already enrolled, and the data from them will be used to decide whether to continue enrolling others in the future.

Otonomy may be shutting down, but the lessons learned there will live on at another biotech working on new treatments for hearing loss.

San Francisco-based Spiral Therapeutics has bought certain assets related to three of Otonomy’s programs, ranging from data, patent rights, and know-how to inventory. That includes data around Otonomy’s twice-failed lead program, OTO-104 (Otividex), a sustained-exposure formulation of dexamethasone.

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.

The government of the United Kingdom is giving out grants to several manufacturers that have a presence in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The government announced that four companies, including Ipsen, contract manufacturer Pharmaron, DNA manufacturer Touchlight and diagnostic test producer Randox, will receive a total of £277 million ($341.1 million). According to a release from the UK government, this represents the first portion of grants from the Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund.