STAT+: Genentech, a biotech with a storied past, confronts new turbulence in the present

For decades, the biotech company Genentech has carved out a reputation in the industry as a scientist’s paradise, a place where researchers have developed new therapies in-house and published high-impact papers. But the recent closure of a high-profile research group and multiple rounds of layoffs have many in the scientific community — including some of the company’s current and former employees — concerned about the biotech’s future and scientific strategy.

The worries were prompted last month by Genentech’s confirmation that it would close its cancer immunology group and that that team’s research chief, renowned cell biologist and former Yale professor Ira Mellman, would step aside. The news left Genentech alumni who worked in or with this group reeling; some told STAT the reorganization could signal a strategy shift toward licensing immunotherapies rather than developing products in-house. Such a shift, they warned, may not succeed without the right internal expertise to vet outside assets.

Inside the company, a subsidiary of Roche, there has also been unease about its growing embrace of artificial intelligence to accelerate drug discovery.

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