As Catalent sets up shop in a new headquarters and refines its corporate image under the ownership of Novo Holdings, the CDMO giant is still making changes to its U.S. head count to find the right level of staffing in its gene therapy division.
As a result, dozens of Catalent employees in Maryland are being let go in the coming months. In a series of disclosures last week, the company revealed that it's laying off 77 employees in the state by Jan. 5.
Catalent operates several facilities in Maryland. In August, the CDMO revealed it's laying off hundreds of Maryland-based employees in its gene therapy group "due to an unexpected shift in demand from a large customer, which made it necessary to reduce our workforce," a spokesperson said at the time.
The latest cuts are part of that same situation, a Catalent spokesperson explained Monday.
"Following our August announcement about an unexpected shift in demand from a large commercial customer, we have announced additional workforce reductions in Baltimore," Catalent's spokesperson said in a Monday statement.
"We are confident in our gene therapy business and look forward to working on behalf of customers to deliver novel therapies for patients with genetic diseases/disorders," the spokesperson added.
Like with the August cuts, the latest round of layoffs will mostly affect the team based in Harmans, Maryland. At that Catalent site, the company plans to cut 61 workers by Jan. 5. Between two other sites in Baltimore and Hanover, the latest cuts will affect 16 employees, according to the Work Adjustment and Retraining Notification notices.
While Catalent didn't confirm the customer's identity, the earlier Catalent layoffs came on the heels of Sarepta Therapeutics' challenging run with the Duchenne muscular dystrophy gene therapy Elevidys. In the wake of the deaths of two non-ambulatory patients who had received the gene therapy, the company paused shipments to non-ambulatory patients in June. The following month, the company briefly paused all shipments of the drug, but it was allowed to resume shipments to ambulatory patients a week later.
In the wake of the developments, Sarepta revealed its own plans to lay off 500 staffers in July. In early August, the biotech said it was looking at adjusting "manufacturing commitments based on latest demand" as it worked to shore up its financial position. Sarepta is known to be a customer of Catalent's.
In a quarterly Securities and Exchange Commission filing last week, Sarepta explained that it entered into a "supplemental letter agreement" with Catalent in August that "addresses certain financial and operational matters" related to its Elevidys developments from this past summer. Among the stipulations in the agreement, the companies agreed to delay the delivery of certain Elevidys batches until "2027 and beyond," according to the filing.
For Catalent, the latest cuts come as the anniversary of its sale to Novo Holdings nears. In 2025, the company has opened a new corporate headquarters in Tampa and revealed a new tagline: “Championing the missions that matter.”