PACT Pharma has let go of 94 employees, leaving remaining staff to work on two clinical stage assets in immuno-oncology, according to a state workforce report in California.
Launched in 2017 by a team that included Nobel Prize-winner David Baltimore, PACT emerged with the promise of developing personalized cancer therapies. Based on research from Antoni Ribas, a professor of medicine at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, the company most recently raised $75 million in an oversubscribed series C in January 2020.
At the time, the company said the money would be used to “expand the scope" of the biotech's clinical plan for personalized CAR-T cell therapies. Backers of the funding included notable investors such as Google Ventures and AbbVie’s investment arm, AbbVie Ventures.
PACT’s lead cell therapy asset, NeoTCR-P1, is being tested in two separate trials for a number of solid tumors.
The company did not return a request for comment as of publication.
PACT is the latest company to be hit by layoffs as the biotech industry reels from a market downturn. On the same day, Eisai announced that U.S. oncology subsidiary H3 Biomedicine would be closing up shop, leaving about 88 people unemployed. The Japanese pharma's Alzheimer's disease partner Biogen also let go of 300 employees in recent months, it was revealed Monday.
To read more about layoffs across the biotech industry, check out Fierce Biotech's Layoff Tracker.