Just two weeks into 2025, January is proving why it’s earned a reputation as the worst month for layoffs.
Late this week, a quartet of companies—IGM Biosciences, Y-mAbs Therapeutics, Passage Bio and Shoreline Biosciences—each revealed plans to cut jobs as they rework their respective pipelines and business structures.
In the case of IGM, the autoimmune- and inflammatory-focused biotech said Thursday that it plans to reduce its workforce by roughly 73% while halting further development on a pair of bispecific antibody T-cell engagers known as imvotamab and IGM-2644.
The company now lists a lone, Sanofi-partnered IgM antibody asset on its pipeline. The treatment, which the partners hope to pit against immunology and inflammation targets, is still in the discovery phase.
“Interim data from the phase 1b studies of imvotamab in rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus show that the depth and consistency of B cell depletion is insufficient to meet our high bar for success,” IGM CEO Mary Beth Harler, M.D., said in the Jan. 9 release.
As for IGM-2644, the company is terminating development of the asset due to “strategic considerations," according to Harler. The biotech had been developing IGM-2644 as a potential treatment for generalized myasthenia gravis.
In October 2024, IGM pivoted from cancer to focus on autoimmune diseases. Prior to that, the biotech said in December 2023 that it would be cutting about 22% of its workforce after dropping two assets in blood cancer and solid tumors.
In a similar move, Shoreline Biosciences plans to let go of an undisclosed number of employees tied to a cell therapy project with Gilead Sciences’ Kite Pharma, Endpoints News reported this week.
While Shoreline did not immediately reply to Fierce Biotech’s request for comment on the situation, the biotech’s CEO Kleanthis Xanthopoulos, Ph.D., confirmed the downsizing effort with Endpoints and said that the fate of its Kite collaboration is still “to be determined.”
Shoreline and Kite originally linked up in 2021 as part of a $2.3 billion deal that would see the companies work on CAR targets for natural killer (NK) cell therapies for blood cancers.
Since then, the partners have tweaked the collaboration to focus on autoimmune diseases, Endpoints noted, citing comments from Shoreline’s CEO.
Over at Passage Bio, the Philadelphia-based neurodegenerative genetic medicines company is planning to lay off about 55% of its staff as it pivots from an in-house to outsourced analytical testing model.
Those moves, coupled with other “reductions in operating expenses,” are expected to extend Passage’s cash runway into the first quarter of 2027, according to a company release.
The clinical-stage company announced the layoffs alongside updated data on its frontotemporal dementia (FTD) gene replacement candidate PBFT02, as well as news that it completed process development and scale-up of a new suspension-based manufacturing process for the asset.
In light of the staff cuts, Passage stressed that it will continue to execute on its clinical trials in two different subsets of FTD, plus its preclinical program in Huntington’s disease.
Meanwhile, the layoffs at Y-mAbs—a commercial-stage biotech based in New York—come as a result of plans to establish two business units devoted to the company’s radiopharmaceuticals platform and the commercialization of its neuroblastoma drug Danyelza, respectively.
As part of the business structure rework, Y-mAbs says it expects to whittle down its workforce by about 13%, though the final number will depend on whether impacted employees accept newly created positions. The company also plans to transfer certain roles from Denmark to the U.S. to “more efficiently coordinate the advancement of its radiopharmaceutical platform” and chart a “small adjustment” to its Danyelza commercial team.
On its LinkedIn page, Y-mAbs says it has between 51 and 200 employees.
As it stands, Y-mAbs expects to reel in about $80 million in revenue for all of 2024. The company says it has a cash runway of about $67 million that should carry its efforts into 2027.
It’s a rough start for the industry in the new year, with more than 10 biotechs announcing workforce reductions over the first 10 days of 2025.
Last year, Fierce Biotech tracked 192 biopharma layoff rounds, a slight uptick from the year before, when 187 rounds were tallied, though the number of layoff rounds across Big Pharma skyrocketed by 281%.
Notably, 2024’s January saw the highest number of cuts when looking at layoffs by month, with 24 rounds recorded. The second peak was reported in August, when 21 layoff announcements were made.
Also significant was the massive jump in Big Pharma layoffs, with the number of times large pharma companies conducted layoff rounds rising 281% compared to 2023. So far, though, no Big Pharmas have entered 2025’s layoff tracker.