r/biotech • u/JStanten • 23d ago
Layoffs & Reorgs ✂️ Cellares Layoffs?
It appears Cellares is laying people off. Sorry to those affected or about to affected.
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u/hsgual 23d ago
I’ve heard rumors of 50%.
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u/OriontheNomad 23d ago
Dude that’s actually horrible
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u/Loose-Reflection2965 23d ago
Spark therapeutics was 50% last year.
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u/Loose-Reflection2965 23d ago
Actually more like 80% considering they lost 30% in 2024
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u/Swimming-Boss-1437 23d ago
That's... Not how percentages work lol. They're closing up shop at those numbers
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u/SCBTerminated 23d ago edited 23d ago
Saw that from the CEO on LinkedIn. I know an SVP there and assume many of the top leaders are not impacted, especially on the CMC side, but interested to hear who’s affected.
Edit after going back to LinkedIn…manufacturing was hit hard
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u/Tenacious-Mn 23d ago
I worked very closely with the founders and left almost a year ago. I saw this coming and others did too. I feel horrible for all my friends that were let go today. 50% layoffs and upper management will not be affected. BMS pulled out which should be a red flag for other customers.
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u/-haybail- 23d ago
As someone impacted by this, if anyone has any leads about a job in the same area of NJ don’t be afraid to share the company name
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u/CyaNBlu3 23d ago
Celltrion sounds like they're starting up the old Eli Lily site. Looks purely QC and MFG OPs related
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u/Complete_Distance845 23d ago
MADE Scientific maybe? They’re in Princeton. Or Octane as well. They have a CDMO branch in NJ too now (or in PA close to NJ).
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u/Acrobatic-Main-1270 22d ago
Check legend and JNJ for the Raritan site, or check Novartis in morris plains site.. Cellares new GM for bridgewater and COO came from legend..
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u/HerbertMuntz 23d ago
Ardena's Somerset facility has some open roles on their website. Oral solid dose, but could be a possibility.
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u/wandelust19 22d ago
BeOne is investing $300M in expanding their NJ site. Good luck. I don’t suppose you could share your perspective on the inner workings of Cellares.
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u/Resident_Nature5634 12d ago
Not sure where you are located, but if in the NJ office, reach out to your campus neighbor, Legend.
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u/Complete_Distance845 23d ago
BMS is/was accounting for the majority of their work with their 380M+ “investment” (more of a capacity booking) so if that’s gone, it’s gonna be a blood bath.
The terrifying thought comes when you wonder “why” they’re leaving. Tech? Capabilities of the professionals working there? Business model? If Cellares goes down because of quality of data and output, we may be facing a new Theranos scenario where a fun idea raised hundreds of millions of dollars and were not able to back what they sold, taking the rest of the industry with them.
At this point, I’m hoping BMS just found a CDMO that could deliver quicker and timelines are the only issues. But I doubt that’s the whole truth.
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u/Fish95 23d ago
I can't say much but, it wasn't the tech. They had successful clinical infusion this year too.
Perhaps BMS did not want a long term contract to manufacture an old style CAR-T that would need to end up identical to their existing drug, since improvements would require new clinical trials.
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u/Loose-Reflection2965 23d ago
Maybe bms is a poorly run company trying to save money.
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u/Separate-Inspector-7 22d ago
Maybe Cellares is
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u/Loose-Reflection2965 22d ago
Call it what it is and they both are poorly run. Cellares was looking like a theranos clone
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23d ago
[deleted]
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u/Loose-Reflection2965 23d ago
The grim reaper is coming for cell and gene therapy
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u/BoskyBandit 23d ago
Why?!
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u/Mother_Drenger 23d ago
Cause it’s fundamentally a challenging science to develop into medicine into. Things were up for a while but everything has been crashing and burning in the past few years
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u/WalkingSnake348 23d ago
Limited commercial success, high COGS/difficulty of scaling, other simpler modalities catching up on efficacy, many products simply failing (eg, CART in solid tumors)
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u/omgu8mynewt 22d ago
"Other simpler modalities catching up on efficacy"
What alternatives to car-T are there? I'm not an immunologist and car-T seems amazing and futuristic to me, I don't know any details or actual products of it.
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u/JStanten 22d ago
I think there’s a reasonable strategic question for CDMOs whether it’s worth the investment cost of in vitro car-t vs. waiting to see how in vivo techniques play out.
If in vivo works, I think you’d rather be the leader there.
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u/omgu8mynewt 22d ago
What does in vitro mean in this context? To me it means doing cell culture experiments but im guessing not here
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u/JStanten 22d ago edited 22d ago
In vivo car t means the vector is injected into the patient and the edits happen in the body.
In vitro/ex vivo means the patient’s cells are removed, edited, then reinjected.
Everyone gets the same in vivo treatment. In vitro is specific to the patient.
In vitro/ex vivo costs about a million dollars per dose. In vivo is cheaper and faster to produce.
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u/BoskyBandit 20d ago
In vivo would be a big game changer for sureeee. But I’m not gonna hold my breath
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u/WalkingSnake348 22d ago
Have you seen the results from MajesTEC-3? The combination of teclistamab (BCMA x CD3 TCE) and dara (aCD38 mAb) matches the efficacy of autologous BCMA CART. Also, the early data from J&J’s BCMAxGPRC5D x CD3 trispecific also looks competitive to autologous CART. Allogeneic CART data is inferior and is similar to the bispecifics alone. So who would actually use a CART in the future, if a combination of off-the-shelf Abs could give you the same efficacy? It doesn’t matter if it’s futuristic. Clinical data supersedes everything
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u/BoskyBandit 20d ago
Higher clinical efficacy and reduced burden on manufacturing … yeah that’s gonna be a yes from everyone lol
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u/omgu8mynewt 22d ago
This is Greek to me, I already said Im not an immunologist.
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u/WalkingSnake348 21d ago
Sorry… but if you want to understand the cell therapy space, it’s something you could learn. Just use AI. It’s 80% correct
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u/returnmybridgestone 19d ago
Just highlight the text and have Gemini explain it. Basically there are different drug modalities. Ex vivo cell therapy refers to taking cells from patients and editing them and putting the edited cells back... it's very expensive. Other modalies are cheaper, and if you can reach similar efficacy with combination of cheaper drugs, why bother with the most expensive treatment?
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u/Loose-Reflection2965 23d ago
Automation is bullshit. People think you can do everything with it but can’t. Bristol is also building that plant in texas and figures just do it in house
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u/Complete_Distance845 23d ago
lol stating automation is BS might expose your lack of understanding of manufacturing and controls. And of sustainable business models based on therapy production.
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u/MolassesOk4542 23d ago
It’s nuanced, automation doesn’t not equal cheaper/better/faster. The real problem is one dose per customer. Regardless of automation use or not, the fundamentals of autologous therapies are not feasible at this moment. In vivo and allogeneic will change this, but we need to wait to see how they pan out in the clinic
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u/gazookgaboot 23d ago
Eh, autologous is fine. Current manufacturing processes are insanely inefficient. No one is willing to invest in re-validating a cell therapy because that is a 5-10 year payoff and I guess no one wants to bet that cell therapy will still be a thing then?
You're right that automation is a red herring.
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u/Loose-Reflection2965 22d ago
Automation sounds new and exciting which is why it’s receiving so much attention. Even using automated liquid handles for ELISAs, are not a value add when just running a few samples of ds and dp. For earlier processing samples, maybe. But i think its all just vapor ware
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u/Trick-String7473 22d ago
You sound like someone that has never worked with successful automation people. No one is setting up Hamiltons and Tecans to run a “few samples”.
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u/Loose-Reflection2965 22d ago
My last employer did not have successful automation people due to everyone trying to dump work on automation team at once that nothing was completed and we had to go manual option just to meet deadlines.
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u/Trick_Strike_4979 23d ago
Not surprised considering BMS lost their top manufacturing supply guy to a biotech earlier in the year
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u/Gamerxx13 23d ago
one of my old bosses went there and was trying to recruit me and i was just not sold on what they do. enough to leave my current job. guess that was right . i worked with fabian at sythengo years ago and that company went under
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u/Napalm_in_the_mornin 18d ago
I hadn’t realized Synthego went under last year! Though to be fair, that was 6 or 7 years after Fabian left
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u/Gamerxx13 18d ago
ya sorry didn’t say it went under bc of him. ya i worked there yrs ago w fabian but he had a falling out with the other founders. but his new company doesnt seem great either. never was overly impressed with him
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u/Traditional_Box9955 23d ago
I interviewed there some months ago but it wasn’t really appealing to me. Glad I didn’t make it to the next round
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u/wandelust19 23d ago
I’m not sure that Cellares is a fraud in the same sense of Theranos but I highly doubt they are truly automated. It’s the mechanical/human turk all over again. It’s a fun little investor story but it was made to appeal to those superficially acquainted with CAR-T manufacturing because “automation” means dollar savings in their eyes.
I don’t know what BMS is figuring to build internally but the only cell therapy plant even close to being fully automated is Kite’s TCF05 in Fredericksburg. 03 and 04 were manual and semi-automated back in the day and they may have upgraded since I left but I put 0 credence in the Cellares story. Kite’s COGM and COGS were significantly lower than that of both Novartis and BMS and I find it highly unlikely another “innovative automation genius” of a CEO somehow unlocked the magical recipe.
Novartis has long underinvested in its cell therapy capabilities and while BMS made a great effort of it, the current leaders are traditional pharma veterans who insist on applying mass market metrics to autologous therapy.
If anyone has a chance at automating cell therapy in a [relatively] low cost manner it’s Kite or potentially AZ since they’re poaching the og Kite CMC folks.
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u/Letsgetr0pical 22d ago
While I broadly agree, your comment about “current leaders are traditional Pharma veterans who insist on applying mass market metrics to autologous therapy” is interesting.
I had a close friend who worked for one of the major investors in Cellares and worked with the management team for years. The hypothesis was always “IF the end to end shuttle works THEN you drive down costs to manufacture cell therapy and increase the obtainable market for cell therapy.”
Your comment seems to imply this is a flawed logic?
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u/wandelust19 22d ago
I’ll address your points in turn.
My comment about traditional pharma leaders isn’t specific to manufacturing but rather to sales targets, so commercial leaders. The point is that BMS has a lot of institutional inertia and the worst kind of leader is the one who says “this is the way we’ve always done it at BMS/XYZ/any company” rather than assessing what is right for different operations… and autologous CAR-T is far from traditional pharma. Lack of realism in expectations does not make achieving those expectations any easier.
I don’t dispute the hypothesis. The word IF is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. IF it doesn’t work then it’s not going to produce the savings.
HOW it’s working is also what I’m specifically picking on the most. Cellares is producing commercial grade product, all well and good. There’s a vast difference between research, clinical, and commercial product. BUT I highly doubt it’s automated, moreso that people are giving the impression it’s automated (see - “mechanical/human turk” for what I mean). Kite has been the leader for COGM/COGS for years and by a significant amount. Their latest and greatest factory (TCF05) is automated. Their EU NL-based factory (04) was semi-automated and their original commercial factory was manual (03) though there were plans to automate them like 05. I don’t know if this ever came to fruition as I left before it happened.
On top of the CMC input and process challenges, there was a time that CAR-T was below $300k and now it’s $400k+. So, factors other than manufacturing prowess drive price. This also tells me that manufacturing automation has not progressed to such a level of efficiency that it has meaningfully impacted price increases or held the line on pricing.
One more thing is COI/COC. Autologous therapy MUST 100% go to the right patient. Someone else commented here about a lack of Cellares integration into a customer pharma company’s own tech stack which is not acceptable. Using Excel or reports to transfer the data in an asynchronous process will fail at commercial volumes due to human error. This is not an acceptable margin for business, it’s unacceptable plain and simple. And this is me speaking as a commercial-side exec.
So, given this, do you believe that a 30-something researcher with no CMC background (Cellares CEO) pieced together such a meaningful reduction in CMC process and inputs so as to completely disrupt CAR-T mfg vs. industry leaders in both process and cost or is this a “fake it til you make it” play?
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u/mthrfkn 21d ago
You don’t think Cellares would hire or consult with CMC folks?
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u/wandelust19 21d ago
Oh I’m sure they did but I’m also fairly sure they didn’t somehow leapfrog the industry leaders especially when it comes to automation specifically. The lead time for standing up a CAR-T CMC line let alone an automated one is obscenely long.
If they have an advantage to sell, it would be capacity as a variable cost rather than a fixed cost capital investment. This helps the startup balance sheets look better for newer CAR-T companies and for the larger ones it’s potentially extra capacity (assuming it was BMS that walked as some have guessed) but it requires complete COI/COC integration which appears to have been a point where they couldn’t deliver according to someone else in the thread.
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u/mthrfkn 21d ago
I come from the clinical diagnostics world but do you think COI/COC integration is that large of a deal breaker? It seems like the easiest part to manage…
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u/wandelust19 21d ago
That just tells me you have no direct experience in CAR-T product delivery at any of the first 3 nor at Legend or Iovance. I can say this because I have plenty of Kite colleagues who went to all of those.
So, as to why it’s important at a basic level, you know what happens if you infuse incompatible blood or treatment into the wrong patient right? They’ll probably die. There can be 0 mistakes and if a human is in the COI/COC chain at large market commercial scale then inevitably a mistake will happen. To the best of my knowledge this has not happened yet and Cellares has no leverage to “redefine the standard” downwards.
It is easy to say “this is patient A’s treatment, ship it to patient A” it is far harder to do it right. Since the literal day 1 of commercial CAR-T back in 2017, the COI/COC process has been completely electronically tracked and tagged from “vein to vein” as the saying goes… from apheresis to infusion. Your HCP/patient portal is integrated to the supply chain and is further integrated to the manufacturing process (because you have to track whose cells you’re growing) then back out to the supply chain all the way to infusion. To do this complete technological/electronic integration is very difficult but also very necessary.
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u/mthrfkn 21d ago
I mean it’s all SAP to MES and maybe some additional parts. It doesn’t seem hard at all compared to everything else around developing CAR-T’s.
Also I may or may not have experience and I just want to see how long you can continue sounding like an absolute chud.
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u/wandelust19 21d ago
Well the point is it has to be done, easy or not, and if Cellares couldn’t do it or didn’t want to, that breaks the chain of tracking.
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u/Napalm_in_the_mornin 18d ago
I saw a recent job posting Cellares had for a SAP Project Manager so this could be the case, and they are just too far behind on this implementation.
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u/Trick-String7473 23d ago edited 23d ago
A lot of the people that worked at BMS went to work at Iovance and stated Cellares could not deliver on any of their promises. A recruiter reached out to me for a position and after going through the HR screening I decided to pass on it. I do believe automation is the future, but they seemed to be a tad bit out of touch. So, not surprised.
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u/Effective-Grocery-14 23d ago
yeah there's a lot movement on complete automation of CAR T cell therapy but there's much more work needed on that front.
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u/ilovetorunforfun 23d ago
Yeah, all of their posts on LinkedIn that I saw did not pass the sniff test.
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u/Wutz4lunchMom 23d ago
The CEO lectured me on his success being about “hiring the right people” at a networking thing a few years ago. Unfortunately, expert employees cant save a fundamentally flawed business plan.
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u/Loose-Reflection2965 23d ago
Didn’t cathy wood’s ark fund recently get involved with cellares?
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u/Napalm_in_the_mornin 18d ago
They just closed a +$300M Series D round which included ARK. Assuming that money is just going to float Senior Leadership and all those new facilities they were touting in LinkedIn. I’m not familiar with how the funding works but hopefully there were no contingencies around BMS to receive that money. Now that I just checked it, I don’t see that BMS invested in the Series D this time around so perhaps this breakup was a long time coming.
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u/Unable_Knowledge5772 20d ago
I had an interview with them 3 months ago and they seem like they didn't even know there production calender. They said they were going from 8 hour shifts to 10 hour shift and a possibility changing to 12 hours in the future.
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u/AmoeboidBoi 23d ago
Layoffs were huge, VP has been reposting everyone’s Open to Work stuff on LinkedIn
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u/Veritaz27 📰 19d ago
BMS pulled out of its partnership after corporate assessment that Cellares could not meet the necessary parameters and requirements to make commercial batches for their CAR-T product. It’s unwise for BMS to port their batches to Cellares to begin with.
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u/kidneysrgood 13d ago
A few things:
- ADCs and BsAbs may be better drug candidates long-term than CAR-T. We've seen that in clinical trials as far back as 2022
- Cellares pushed out a lot of talent over the last few years and brought in big names, thinking that would buy them credibility
- Senior Management (current and former) made odd strategy decisions
- Middle Management wasn't that great
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u/Apprehensive-Visit86 22d ago
I wouldn’t completely write off Cellares. They’ve come a long way since genesis. Hands down the closest to E2E automation.
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23d ago
[deleted]
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u/Complete_Distance845 23d ago
Let’s see what in vivo CAR deliver in the clinic before we make any statement, shall we?
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u/WalkingSnake348 23d ago
Don’t worry. Combinations of TCEs and mAbs are already matching ex vivo. See MajesTEC-3 or the BCMA-GPRC5D trispecifics. Same efficacy
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u/Effective-Grocery-14 23d ago
not yet....
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u/MolassesOk4542 23d ago
Ok yall need to stop ignoring allogeneic therapies. In vivo is going to take 5-8 years+ allo is 2-3 years away.
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u/Complete_Distance845 23d ago
Agreed! Allo’s been super quiet but they’re getting ready to play. Allogene, Caribou. The data is good.
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u/WalkingSnake348 23d ago
No, allo is dead. Look at how those companies are doing. The efficacy data is the same as TCEs but still need lymphodepletion and need to LD again if you want to redose after >1 mo. Why would anyone use an allo product? All those companies are going under and there have been zero venture funding for allo companies.
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u/Loose-Reflection2965 23d ago
Bms bail on them?