Roughly two months after Bristol Myers Squibb disclosed hundreds of job cuts at its New Jersey corporate headquarters, it’s further shrinking the headcount there.
Another 117 layoffs are coming to the Lawrenceville, NJ, site and will take place through December 2025, according to a recently filed WARN report to the state. The cuts will increase the total number of impacted employees at the location to nearly 900, and are part of a broader workforce reduction announced in April.
At the time, the drugmaker said about 2,200 employees were expected to be let go in a move to shave off $1.5 billion in costs. Cuts have also hit sites in Washington state and California, including the full closure of a cell therapy-focused facility in Redwood City, CA.
A spokesperson for BMS said the company is “grateful for the contributions of our colleagues.”
The impact of the restructuring on its pipeline is also coming into clearer view. On Friday, the biotech Agenus disclosed that Bristol Myers was handing back a bispecific antibody candidate targeting TIGIT and CD96 that BMS paid $200 million upfront to license. Agenus said in its filing that it understands the decision to be “part of a broader strategic realignment of their development pipeline which involves other licensed products.”
BMS said the Agenus cull was part of “ongoing portfolio prioritization efforts.”
The Agenus pact dates back to 2021, when TIGIT was en vogue as a next-generation checkpoint inhibitor behind PD-1 or PD-L1. It hasn’t quite lived up to that hope, and other pharmas like Gilead and Roche have showed middling data or, in some cases, failure.
Agenus had earned about $45 million out of the $1.36 billion in potential milestone payments tied to the deal. The company says it will look to continue development of the asset, including potential new partnerships.
When BMS first announced the restructuring this spring, it disclosed about a dozen programs that were falling by the wayside. The majority were early and mid-stage oncology candidates, including an anti-SIRPα candidate and a DGK inhibitor.