Following a fresh round of job cuts in December, CDMO National Resilience is carrying its downsizing efforts into 2025.
Resilience plans to lay off 120 workers at its Research Triangle Park facility in Durham, North Carolina, according to a notice filed with the state this week.
"We have made the decision to downsize our RTP facility based on customer demand, which requires reducing headcount in parts of our network while simultaneously growing it in other parts," a Resilience spokesperson said over email.
The latest round of layoffs comes about a month after the CDMO telegraphed plans to cut 105 roles at its site in Alachua, Florida, which it acquired through its buyout of biologic drug substance specialist Ology Bioservices in 2021.
As with the Alachua cuts, Resilience’s downsizing efforts in Research Triangle Park are slated to affect workers at a site Resilience acquired since its 2020 debut.
In 2021, Resilience laid out $110 million upfront to purchase the Research Triangle Park commercial lentiviral vector manufacturing site from gene therapy specialist bluebird bio. The transaction formed part of a broader team-up between the companies focused on R&D and delivery of next-generation cell therapies.
As part of the accord, Resilience agreed to supply bluebird and its cell therapy spinoff 2seventy bio with viral vector supplies from the North Carolina plant and share expenses and potential revenues that come from the agreement. At the time, Resilience said it planned to hold on to all existing bluebird staffers and expand the site’s production footprint.
As it stands, the Research Triangle Park facility is equipped to handle both clinical and commercial gene therapy manufacturing, Resilience's spokesperson said. The site also boasts roughly 45,000 square feet of grey space that the company may use to expand its drug product capabilities in the future.
As for last month’s layoffs, a Resilience spokesperson previously told Fierce Pharma that the CDMO charted the move as part of a broader effort to downsize its government services business and increase its focus on commercial manufacturing and development.
Despite multiple rounds of layoffs since its debut, Resilience has often pumped cash into manufacturing expansions in equal measure.
Last February, the company said it would spend $225 million to add a fourth prefilled syringe line at its facility in Cincinnati. Prior to that, Resilience in 2023 said it was expanding and adding around 440 new jobs at a former AstraZeneca plant in West Chester, Ohio.
National Resilience launched in November 2020 with more than $800 million in backing from Arch Venture Partners, 8VC and other venture firms. The company quickly set out on a mission to tackle well-documented challenges around biopharma supply chains that became especially apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since then, the San Diego-based CDMO has also established facilities in California’s Bay Area, Boston, Philadelphia and Toronto.