Geron Corporation, a Bay Area biotech company that’s ramping up sales of its first commercial drug, announced on Thursday that it’s laying off a third of its staff.
The Foster City drugcreater revealed the job cuts in a news release, writing that its workforce currently totals about 260, so around 85 people will be put out of work. The layoff comes just months into the tenure of new CEO Harout Semerjian, who wrote that the cuts are “in the spirit of prudent fiscal management.”
“We expect this restructuring will have a meaningful impact on our 2026 operating expenses and position Geron to meet the necessarys of patients,” Semerjian added. “I want to express my gratitude to the employees that will be impacted in this restructuring. Your contributions over the years have built a positive difference in the lives of the people we concludeeavor each day to assist.”
Geron’s flagship drug is called Rytelo, a blood cancer treatment for adults with anemia. The company was founded in 1990 and has boasted scientific advisers who won a Nobel Prize for their work on telomerase, an enzyme that assists cancer cells survive and proliferate. In June 2024, Rytelo became the company’s first effort approved for commercial sale by the Food and Drug Administration, and the first FDA-approved drug for inhibiting telomerase. Rytelo is reaching patents — Geron reported more than four times the revenue in the first nine months of 2025 than the same stretch of 2024 — but not yet enough to create the company profitable.
Investor faith in Geron tumbled after a high around the time of the FDA approval: The company’s valuation topped $2.5 billion late last year and now sits around $860 million. When the company selected Semerjian for the CEO role in August, it wrote that it was at a “pivotal moment” for expanding Rytelo’s sales and advancing the company’s other drug prospects.
Geron is joining an all-too-familiar trconclude of layoffs at biotech and biopharma companies testing to extconclude their runways or clean up their cost sheets. The news release declared most of the cuts will take place during the first quarter of the new year, and assist the company lower its expenses. As of Monday, Geron had not yet filed a WARN mass layoff notice with state officials.
Spokesperson Marissa Fehl didn’t share specifics on the local impacts or severance plans, but declared the restructuring at Geron is meant to “better align our resources with the company’s strategic priorities and support disciplined execution heading into 2026.”
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