Intellia Therapeutics is starting off 2025 with a significant head count reduction as it tosses out pipeline assets to keep the engine running until a potential commercial launch in 2027.
This is not how Intellia would have wanted to kick off its J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference news cycle. The CRISPR company, once at the cutting edge of new life sciences research, is waving goodbye to just over a quarter (27%) of its total workforce and is stopping work on its investigational med NTLA-3001 in alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency-associated lung disease as well as “select research-stage programs.”
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech said in a release it will take an $8 million hit for the redundancies and pipeline reorganization.
Intellia will hope not to make this an annual tradition, as these rounds of cuts come a year after it also fired 15% of its team and hit pause on some exploratory research work.
The company ended 2025 with $862 million, which it says is enough to keep it afloat until the first half of 2027. That is when the biotech hopes to have its first commercial assets ready for launch in the form of NTLA-2002 for hereditary angioedema (HAE), currently in phase 3, and nex-z for transthyretin (ATTR) amyloidosis, also in late-stage testing.
As it looks to change from a research-based biotech into a commercial entity, Intellia is also planning a “complete buildout of the commercial leadership team by second half of 2025,” while also boosting medical education activities in HAE and ATTR amyloidosis to help with its launch trajectories, should it gain FDA approvals in the next two years.
Both drugs would be entering competitive markets. BioCryst Pharmaceuticals is the most recent entry with Orladeyo, the first oral option to prevent HAE attacks, which competes with Takeda’s rival injection Takhzyro.
In ATTR, meanwhile, there are a host of drugs for several versions of ATTR, including Alnylam’s Onpattro and Amvuttra, Ionis Pharmaceuticals' Tegsedi and its AstraZeneca-partnered Wainua, which are used against polyneuropathy (damage to nerves) associated with ATTR.
Pfizer’s Vyndaqel is also approved to help to stabilize the transthyretin protein for cardiomyopathy associated with TTR.
“We understand the significant potential of our late-stage programs, and within a challenging market environment, have made a difficult decision to focus our resources predominantly on NTLA-2002 and nex-z where we have the greatest opportunity to create significant, near-term value,” CEO John Leonard, M.D., said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Intellia has announced its chief scientific officer Laura Sepp-Lorenzino, Ph.D., has now retired but will remain as an adviser for the company throughout 2025. Birgit Schultes, Ph.D., who leads Intellia’s immunology and cell therapy division, will be promoted to executive vice president and CSO on Monday.
This comes one month after rival CRISPR company Editas Medicine also took the ax to three-quarters of its staffers, including its chief medical officer, after it was unable to find a partner for its sickle cell disease medicine.
It also comes just days after gene editing company Scribe announced it would lay off 20% of its workforce.