A California cancer biotech is closing its King of Prussia site and laying off 130 people
The job cuts add to a string of layoffs in the Philadelphia region’s biotech sector this year.
A California-based cancer biotech, Exelixis, is closing a laboratory in King of Prussia and laying off 130 people, the company said Wednesday.
Less than two years after Exelixis expanded to the Philadelphia region in 2022, the publicly traded company said in its annual report published early last year that it intended to stop leasing 40,000 of the 64,000 square feet of laboratory space in the region.
The company, based in Alameda, now plans to leave the rest of the space. It did not say when the closure would happen.
A company official had told investors in 2023 that being on both the East and West Coasts “sets us up well to be able to move on a global scale commercially when we have that opportunity with some of these new compounds that are currently in the clinic.”
The company touted the ability of the King of Prussia location to tap into the rich biotech talent base in the Philadelphia region and central New Jersey.
It’s not clear what led to the retrenchment.
“As our business has continued to evolve, we have made the difficult decision to reorganize the company’s structure to focus largely on our operations in Alameda,” Exelixis said in an email.
Exelixis had 1,174 employees at the end of last year. Cutting 130 of those jobs amounts to an 11% reduction.
The move by Exelixis adds to a run of biotech layoffs in the Philadelphia region. Others have included Spark Therapeutics, Carisma Therapeutics, and Century Therapeutics.