Thermo Fisher to lay off 300 employees at two viral vector manufacturing facilities
Thermo Fisher Scientific is laying off 300 employees at two viral vector manufacturing facilities in Massachusetts, which will take effect March 30, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice.
The layoffs will affect workers at Thermo Fisher’s Cambridge and Plainville sites. In November 2024, Thermo Fisher cut 160 jobs at those two viral vector plants as well as in Lexington, Massachusetts, which the Boston Business Journal at that time reported would be closing. Early last year, the company also axed 74 jobs at its plasmids manufacturing lab in Carlsbad, California.
Despite the latest layoffs in Massachusetts, Thermo Fisher says it is expanding its pharma services capabilities including sites in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Bend, Oregon, to enable research and development (R&D), manufacturing and testing of oral solid dose drug formulations.
Thermo Fisher also recently invested in boosting its global clinical trial network, including a new GMP-certified ultra-cold facility in Bleiswijk, Netherlands, label printing and seamless packaging integration in Basel, Switzerland, as well as expanded clinical trial logistics solutions in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
During last week’s fourth-quarter 2024 earnings call, Thermo Fisher CEO Marc Casper touted the company’s expanding pharma services and clinical research capabilities in the U.S. and Europe. Thermo Fisher’s Q4 revenue grew 5% year over year to $11.4 billion, with Casper in part crediting the company’s pharma services, which include contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) capabilities.
In the fourth quarter of 2024, Casper said the company introduced its Accelerator Drug Development solution for emerging biotech and large pharma companies, which provides a suite of manufacturing, clinical research, and supply chain services — including small molecule, biologics and cell and gene therapies — from pre-clinical to commercialization.
“This truly unique offering leverages our combined CDMO and [contract research organization] capabilities to enable our customers to move their critical drug development programs forward with speed, quality, and efficiency, helping to improve their return on their R&D investments,” Casper said. “This is a huge value-add for our customers and not something they can do alone, or with our competitors.”
Casper concluded that improving returns on investment in R&D “is everything in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry.”
However, R&D budget and life science tools spending is projected to be mixed in 2025, according to results of a new survey commissioned by analyst firm Leerink Partners. Those surveyed said on average they expect a decline in services spending this year compared to 2024. The survey included a range of large pharma and biotechnology companies, CROs, CDMOs, as well as small biotechs.
Thermo Fisher and Agilent Technologies, in that order, were named by survey respondents as the preferred vendors of choice in the liquid chromatography and mass spectrometers categories.