As layoffs continue to strike biopharma outfits big and small, life sciences technology and service provider Cytiva is starting to feel the pressure, too.
Cytiva will lay off 85 employees from its facility in Westborough, Massachusetts, beginning at the end of the week, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) alert filed with the state.
After kicking off March 7, the round of staff reductions will carry on through the month with any remaining employees set to be officially let go at a “later date,” according to the state filing.
A Cytiva spokesperson confirmed the cuts to Fierce Pharma, noting that the company’s “regular business mechanism involves continuous review to ensure we are positioned to drive long-term success and deliver life-saving products to our customers.”
“These actions were a part of our longer- term business planning and will help ensure our business remains healthy and competitive,” she continued.
The spokesperson did not comment on the types of roles being affected nor on the function of Cytiva’s Westborough site.
The facility appears to focus on manufacturing, based on a job listing page by Cytiva’s parent company, Danaher Corporation, which currently lists several openings at Westborough for positions such as manufacturing engineer, processing scientist and downstream process development and scale-up manager.
The company also alluded to the fact that the Westborough plant is used to crank out single-use technologies in a 2020 press release regarding a ribbon-cutting at a separate Massachusetts manufacturing facility.
Cytiva, which has been in the business for decades, went by the name GE Healthcare Life Sciences prior to its $21.4 billion acquisition by Danaher in 2020. Cytiva offers a range of services and products for biopharma companies with applications in areas like bioprocessing, cell and gene therapy, diagnostics, protein research and more.
The company boasts a workforce of nearly 16,000 people across more than 40 countries, Danaher says on its website.
After several years of steady job cuts in the industry, biopharma’s layoff blight doesn’t appear to be abating yet in 2025.
Within the last week alone, major staff cuts were unveiled at prominent drugmakers like Bristol Myers Squibb, CRISPR Therapeutics and Eisai.
Meanwhile, smaller biotechs like Ryvu Therapeutics, Lava Therapeutics and Repare Therapeutics have also trimmed their head counts in recent days, according to Fierce Biotech’s layoff tracker.