Relay Therapeutics is cutting its workforce to help streamline its research organization as it looks to complete its first large-scale, pivotal clinical trial.
To help streamline its research organization, Relay Therapeutics will lay off about 10% of its workforce, affecting about 30 employees, a company spokesperson told BioSpace in an emailed statement. The spokesperson did not specify when the cuts are effective for the Cambridge, Massachusetts–based clinical-stage precision medicine biotech.
The streamlining process has focused on “rationalizing the tools and on streamlining the teams to enable them to be more efficient,” and its final changes include the layoffs, according to the statement.
Fierce Biotech reported that Relay also had layoffs in July that affected less than 5% of employees at the company, which it noted employed about 300 people at that time. Fierce also reported that the streamlining process is meant to save the biotech about $50 million a year. That savings is noteworthy given the biotech had a net loss of $92.2 million for the second quarter of 2024 and reported in an August SEC filing that it’s had significant operating losses since inception. The company launched in 2016.
The latest layoffs come two months after Relay noted in the SEC filing that it’s never successfully completed any large-scale, pivotal clinical trials and “may be unable to do so for any product candidates we develop.”
That said, the company also announced at that time that it had started a global clinical trial collaboration with Pfizer for combination development of RLY-2608 + fulvestrant + atirmociclib (CDK4i) in certain metastatic breast cancers. In September, Relay announced a win for RLY-2608, noting that interim Phase I/II data for the experimental treatment had elicited progression-free survival in heavily pretreated patients.
In a statement at that time, Don Bergstrom, the company’s president of R&D, said the findings suggest that RLY-2608 could offer a level of benefit to patients not previously possible with existing nonselective medicines while also having significantly less toxicity. Relay planned to “move quickly” to engage with regulators and arrive at a design for a pivotal trial it hopes to start next year.
