Resilience Is Hiring Elsewhere As Sanofi's Contract Wind-Down Results In Layoffs In Boston

National Resilience extended job offers to about 250 former Sanofi employees when it acquired a former Sanofi plant in 2021. Due to a downturn in demand and the end of a commercial manufacturing run, layoffs have been announced.

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Resilience's co-founder and CEO said in a recent interview that the company continues to grow elsewhere, and the move should not be seen as an indication of the company's overall health.

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About 213 Resilience employees in Boston will lose their jobs as a result of the company's job cuts, a company spokesperson confirmed via email. The facility will retain 50 to 80 employees for a limited period of time.

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Rahul Singhvi, Resilience's chief executive officer, told Fierce Pharma the reduction was a "function of transition" that was brought on by the end of a manufacturing contract with Sanofi. In 2021, Resilience acquired the plant in question from Sanofi, and the company struck an agreement with the French pharma to produce Cerezyme, which is a therapy for Gaucher disease created by the company. Last year, that contract was scheduled to end as per the contract terms.

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"We have successfully completed the work that Sanofi has given us," the CEO said. “Likewise, after we had purchased the facility, we began to build out a modern plant within the facility so that we could be able to attract new customers as soon as we acquired the facility."

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Singhvi pointed out that the former Genzyme facility was technologically outdated when it was acquired by a new owner. There has been some interest in Resilience after undergoing renovations, but not the kind of load we would have to carry in order to continue to employ our entire staff after the renovations have been completed.

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As Singhvi explained, Cerezyme, a drug that is expected to bring in 707 million euros (about $753 million) in 2022 sales, was considered a "very high-volume product" by the company at the time. At the moment, however, it does not have the kind of volumes that would require the use of so many people at the Boston facility.

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In response to the CEO's comments, Resilience hopes the staff reduction will be temporary and that workers will return once volume increases.

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In spite of this, Singhvi emphasized that this is a problem that is particular to Boston. In a similar deal with AstraZeneca, he pointed out that Resilience acquired a manufacturing plant in Ohio and agreed to produce "select AstraZeneca medicines" for a long period of time, following its acquisition of the facility. There was a sudden increase in volume in that instance.

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“We may need to hire more people in Westchester, Ohio,” Singhvi said.

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Currently, Resilience has a total of 7 drug manufacturing facilities throughout North America that it owns and operates. As part of a joint venture with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, it also controls half of a cell therapy manufacturing center. The number of full-time employees at Resilience, without taking into account the joint venture, is close to 2,200, according to Singhvi.

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Founded in late 2020, Resilience has a mission to become "the world's most advanced biopharmaceutical manufacturing ecosystem." In terms of the company's long-term goal, "there is no change in that vision," the CEO of Resilience said in an interview.

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“The goal of our company is to become the most trustworthy, competent, and reliable biomanufacturing company in the world,” he said. "We want our customers to see our company as trustworthy, competent, and reliable."

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There are currently more than 50 customers using Resilience's services. Having launched the business two-plus years ago, the company has learned that it needs to scale the business in parallel with its roster of R&D technologies, Singhvi explained.

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There is now a complete end-to-end facility within the company that covers a range of drug modalities, such as biologics, vaccines, viral vectors, and nucleic acids, which enables the company to provide end-to-end capabilities across a range of drug modalities. One area where the company could still develop capabilities is in the area of commercial-stage cell therapy manufacturing, according to the company's CEO.

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All in all, Resilience has been able to live up to its name despite a tough financial environment, says its CEO. Singhvi noted that despite the fact that the biotech market is under pressure, the company has not seen a big drop in customer volumes, at least not in early- to mid-stage programs.

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He further stated that companies have to "move away from the old ways" of developing manufacturing technology as well as drugs in order to stay competitive. He believes that more and more pharmaceutical companies will be turning to specialized manufacturers like Resilience, which is out to prove its thesis that technology can enable U.S. companies to manufacture drugs locally, as well as complete global sales regardless of cheaper wages abroad.

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“Technology could be the great equalizer for us, allowing us to remain globally competitive and a leader when it comes to not only discovering and inventing new drugs but also in terms of scaling them up and industrializing them,” Singhvi went on to say.

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