Plant-based Covid-19 vaccine developer Medicago laying off 60+ at North Carolina plant – Endpoints News

Med­ica­go had been look­ing at, among oth­er things, a plant-based vac­cine for Covid-19. But those plans aren’t go­ing in the di­rec­tion Med­ica­go want­ed to.

Med­ica­go’s US sub­sidiary Med­ica­go USA filed a WARN no­tice Wednes­day in North Car­oli­na, say­ing that 62 em­ploy­ees at its man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Durham will be out of a job with­in two months.

Med­ica­go CEO Toshi­fu­mi Ta­da, who just re­cent­ly joined the biotech ear­li­er this year, told End­points News via email that:

…as the pan­dem­ic has evolved, the epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sit­u­a­tion and the avail­abil­i­ty of bi­va­lent vac­cines has demon­strat­ed the need for Med­ica­go to re­view its ini­tial plan and its glob­al strat­e­gy re­gard­ing COV­IFENZ. We are hard at work on a new ap­proach to de­vel­op­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing plant-based ther­a­peu­tics that meets the needs of glob­al pub­lic health. As part of this work, and af­ter care­ful as­sess­ment of Med­ica­go’s cur­rent and fu­ture needs, we have made the dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion to end the con­tracts of 62 em­ploy­ees at our man­u­fac­tur­ing site in Durham, North Car­oli­na, be­fore the end of 2022.

We are sin­cere­ly grate­ful for the com­mit­ment and ded­i­ca­tion of these tal­ent­ed in­di­vid­u­als, and we wish them the very best go­ing for­ward.

Ta­da be­came CEO back in May, tran­si­tion­ing from head of vac­cine busi­ness de­vel­op­ment at Med­ica­go’s par­ent com­pa­ny, Mit­subishi Tan­abe Phar­ma. This is the newest de­vel­op­ment for the vac­cine mak­er af­ter the WHO balked at Med­ica­go’s Covid-19 vac­cine ear­li­er this year. Med­ica­go part­nered with GSK to use one of GSK’s ad­ju­vants to boost im­mune re­sponse.

The in­ter­na­tion­al or­ga­ni­za­tion balked be­cause of the biotech’s ties to Big To­bac­co, more specif­i­cal­ly Philip Mor­ris In­ter­na­tion­al, the mak­er of Marl­boro cig­a­rettes and a part-own­er of Med­ica­go.

Many biotechs — and sev­er­al phar­mas — have had to pull out the trim­mers in 2022 be­cause of bud­get con­straints and R&D mishaps. Biotechs in­clude Zosano, which now filed for bank­rupt­cy and is sell­ing off all of its as­sets, af­ter do­ing two rounds of lay­offs in or­der to try and stay afloat. Or more re­cent­ly Am­brx, an­nounc­ing plans last week to cut 15% of staff in a bid to ex­tend cash re­sources.

On the phar­ma side, Ab­b­Vie re­cent­ly laid off 100 in Cal­i­for­nia, right at the same time as Bris­tol My­ers let go of 260 staffers as it was look­ing to in­te­grate Turn­ing Point Ther­a­peu­tics in­to the fold.

Bio­gen al­so start­ed lay­ing off peo­ple in light of Aduhelm’s fail­ure back in March. A se­nior of­fi­cial with­in the com­pa­ny told End­points at the time that more than 100 in­di­vid­u­als have been laid off so far, in­clud­ing two-thirds of the Alzheimer’s com­mer­cial team and all of the Alzheimer’s field lead­ers.