The chief scientific officer at gene editing company Metagenomi is out, the company confirmed to Endpoints News.
“As of yesterday, I have parted ways with Metagenomi by mutual agreement,” CSO Luis Borges posted to LinkedIn last week. He had joined the company last year after serving in the same role at cell therapy maker Century Therapeutics.
His exit comes just five months after the Emeryville, CA-based startup followed through with an initial public offering, a rare move for a preclinical biotech amid the public market weakness of the past few years. It priced the February IPO at $15 per share $MGX and trades at about $5 apiece today.
“We came to a mutual separation with Luis Borges, and wish him all the best in future endeavors,” a Metagenomi spokesperson said by email.
Also this week, another scientist at Metagenomi posted on LinkedIn that their “department in R&D was officially eliminated” and that they were looking for new roles elsewhere in the Bay Area.
“We do not comment on prior employees’ LinkedIn posts, which may or may not be accurate,” the Metagenomi spokesperson said about that post. As of March 31, Metagenomi had 237 full-time employees, including 200 focused on R&D. With $327.4 million at the end of the first quarter, the company predicted in May it would have enough cash to support operations “into 2027.”
Layoffs continue to impact employees across the biopharma industry. Gene therapy maker Spark Therapeutics is notifying employees of layoffs this week, Endpoints reported on Thursday, and large pharmaceutical corporations like Takeda, Sanofi, Pfizer and others are cutting jobs and shuttering sites as they prioritize their pipelines.
Metagenomi also lost a key partnership with Moderna in May, in a move that Metagenomi described as “mutual.” The company still has partnerships with Ionis and Affini-T. Its pipeline includes projects across hemophilia A, cardiovascular disease, cystic fibrosis and various rare diseases, among other areas. Its ex vivo CAR-T programs are in the areas of immuno-oncology and autoimmune diseases, where cell therapies have recently become a fixture.