Following its $4.8 billion acquisition of local biotech Mirati Therapeutics, Bristol Myers Squibb is laying off a majority of the San Diego company’s workforce over the next year.
The pharmaceutical giant announced its plans to buy Mirati in October as part of its broader effort to strengthen its oncology portfolio.
Mirati has been developing treatments targeted at the genetic and immunological causes of cancer for nearly three decades in San Diego. It employed about 593 people at the end of 2022.
Bristol Myers Squibb will terminate approximately 423 employees over the next year, according to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) letter it filed with the state last month. The job cuts affect 176 San Diego-based employees, 76 remote workers in California and 171 out-of-state remote workers.
However, employees “who apply for, receive, and accept an offer to transfer to another position with” Bristol Myers Squibb will not be terminated, according to the WARN letter.
Some of the laid-off positions include Mirati’s chief medical officer, executive directors, vice presidents and scientists. The first round of job cuts take effect April 22 and carry into Feb. 21, 2025.
Bristol Myers Squibb buys San Diego cancer therapy company for $4.8BJob cuts are not unusual when a company completes an acquisition.
“We are very pleased to have completed the acquisition of Mirati Therapeutics to further strengthen our oncology franchise and continue bringing innovative medicines to patients,” a Bristol Myers Squibb spokesperson said in an email to the Union-Tribune this week. “As part of the integration, we are aligning resources to best our operating model and our portfolio evolution. Unfortunately, some of our employees have been impacted as a result of these changes and a top priority for us is ing employees throughout the transition process.”
The spokesperson reiterated that “San Diego remains a key innovation hub” for Bristol Myers Squibb.
Mirati is headquartered at 3545 Cray Court in San Diego where it leases about 118,000 square feet of office and lab space. The lease is set to expire mid-2033 with the option for early termination in 2028, according to Mirati’s most recent financial filings.
The company also has two subsidiaries in the Netherlands and Switzerland.
When the deal was finalized in January, Mirati stopped trading on the stock market and became a wholly owned subsidiary of Bristol Myers Squibb.
Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Eli Lilly and other big pharmas are backing this San Diego biotech with $175MThrough this merger, Bristol Myers Squibb gained access to Mirati’s commercial non-small cell lung cancer drug Krazati, which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug istration in December 2022. It also got Mirati’s pipeline of potential treatments for lung, bile duct and skin cancer tumors, as well as tumor mutations in pancreatic, lung and colorectal cancers.
Bristol Myers Squibb funded the acquisition through a combination of cash and debt, with the potential for Mirati to receive an additional $1 billion in milestone payments.
The New Jersey-based pharmaceutical company has been expanding its portfolio of cancer treatments in recent years. This includes growing its local presence by striking deals in San Diego.
In February, it completed its $4.1 billion acquisition of San Diego’s RayzeBio for its radiopharmaceutical therapeutics to treat solid tumors. In 2022, Bristol Myers Squibb made a $4.1 billion deal to buy another San Diego company, Turning Point Therapeutics, for its treatments that target lung cancer and mutations that cause cancer.
