Danish pharma company Bavarian Nordic is shutting down its U.S.-based R&D site in San Diego and laying off all 48 employees there, according to a notice filed in California on Dec. 9.
The first round of layoffs will take effect on Dec. 13, according to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act notice, with the second round to follow between March 17 and March 31, 2025. The site will close permanently around April 1.
With the southern California site shuttered, the Scandinavian biotech’s remaining American foothold will be in Durham, North Carolina, which is home to its U.S. subsidiary.
Bavarian Nordic acquired the San Diego site in a February 2023 deal with Emergent BioSolutions, in which it also secured a biologics manufacturing site in Bern, Switzerland, as well as Emergent’s typhoid fever vaccine Vivotif, cholera shot Vaxchora and late-stage chikungunya candidate CHIKV VLP.
Since that deal, “we have continuously assessed our operations to invest in the future and deliver the greatest impact to patients,” the company said in an emailed statement to Fierce Biotech. “This decision does not impact our continued commitment to protecting communities in the U.S., and Bavarian Nordic will continue to have a significant footprint in the United States.”
The San Diego site closure comes as Bavarian Nordic announced plans to buy back DKK 150 million (about $21 million) of its shares on Dec. 11. In a release, president and CEO Paul Chapin said now was a good time for the buyback due to the company’s “capital allocation policy and strong financial position.”
That release also mentions a “restructuring of the R&D organization” as part of the integration of the assets acquired from Emergent, a move expected to save DKK 50 to 75 million (about $7 million to $10.5 million) every year from 2025 onwards.
The vaccine maker’s smallpox shot Jynneos recently proved effective in preventing mpox in teens in an NIH study. In September, the firm signed a deal to provide 1 million doses of Jynneos to African countries most affected by the current mpox outbreak through an agreement with UNICEF.
The company turned in a record financial year in 2023, in part due to mpox vaccine sales, though that didn’t stop Bavarian Nordic from shuttering its cancer vaccine program in February 2024 to focus fully on infectious diseases.