Atara Biotherapeutics continues to salami slice its head count, this time laying off 30% of what remains of the biopharma's workforce.
Only three months ago, the company waved goodbye to half of its employees in the wake of the FDA’s decision to halt trials of the allogeneic T-cell immunotherapy Ebvallo and a CAR-T candidate. Atara’s remaining staff could have been forgiven for assuming the agency’s move to release the hold on Ebvallo last week meant their jobs were safe for the time being.
But Monday, Atara told its remaining employees that 30% of them would be following their former colleagues out of the door. The latest changes will leave just 23 people working at the biopharma, who are considered “essential to executing on the company’s strategic priorities,” according to a May 12 Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
These layoffs are expected to be completed by August and are estimated to cost Atara around $1.4 million in severance and related benefits.
Workforce reductions are an almost annual occurrence at Atara. The biopharma waved goodbye to 20% of its staff in 2022 and then shrunk its head count by a further 25% last year as it moved its focus from a failed multiple sclerosis cell therapy toward its CAR-T prospects.
Atara was forced to make another strategic shake-up earlier this year in the wake of the FDA’s decision to halt trials of the Europe-approved Ebvallo and an allogeneic CD19-targeted CAR-T candidate called ATA3219 that was being aimed at non-Hodgkin lymphoma and systemic lupus erythematosus.
The 50% layoffs that followed in March were accompanied by Atara’s decision to end work on ATA3219 and another CAR-T called ATA3431.
Atara explained at the time that the clinical hold was tied to an FDA inspection of a third-party manufacturing facility. With the hold now lifted, Atara is allowed to resume its phase 3 Allele study of Ebvallo for patients with Epstein-Barr virus-associated post-transplant lymphoproliferative disease as well as a phase 2 label-expansion multicohort clinical study.
Announcing the FDA’s decision last week, Atara CEO Cokey Nguyen, Ph.D., said the company was “working closely with our partner Pierre Fabre Laboratories and our clinical trial sites and anticipate resuming enrollment and treatment of patients as soon as possible.”