Cambridge jobs to go in Nxera Pharma's restructuring blueprint
A focused restructuring designed to concentrate investment and resources on efficient platforms, programmes and products with the greatest value creation potential was announced today. The company has promised to reveal more in the days ahead.
Listed on the Tokyo exchange, the company has operations in Cambridge and London in the UK, Tokyo and Osaka in Japan, Basel in Switzerland and Seoul (South Korea). No cuts are being made at the Swiss and Korean operations. Nxera says its objective is to top £245 million in net sales and achieve a profit margin of at least 30 per cent following the restructuring.
The planned spending reduction in Cambridge for 2026 is projected at £17m. Nxera tells Business Weekly that a workforce reduction of around 15 per cent globally is planned - around 60 jobs in a global headcount of some 400 people. Around 170 of a 400 worldwide workforce are Cambridge based.
Nxera Pharma is a technology powered biopharma company in pursuit of new specialty medicines to improve the lives of patients with unmet needs worldwide. It has built an agile, new-generation commercial business to develop and commercialise innovative medicines, including several launched products, to address this high value, large and growing market and those in the broader APAC region.
It is prioritising on R & D in areas of disease where it sees the largest potential paybacks in a cost-effective programme.
Strategic focus will be on the development of next-generation therapies for obesity, metabolic and endocrine disorders following the launch of Nxera’s proprietary pipeline in August. Multiple partnered programmes are said to be progressing through clinical development with momentum and near-term milestones are expected in FY2026.
It is not just the workers who will be laid off: Nxera is streamlining the leadership as well - cutting the executive team from 10 to seven by next March.
Dr. Patrik Foerch has been appointed Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) and President of Nxera Pharma UK, succeeding Dr. Matthew Barnes with immediate effect. Dr. Foerch is described as an accomplished R & D leader across immunology, oncology and neuroscience, having served in senior roles at UK biotech companies Peptone and Sitryx and at the European pharmaceutical company UCB.
Most recently, he served as CSO at Peptone, contributing to an AI-enabled discovery platform and the build-out of an early pipeline targeting intrinsically disordered proteins. Prior to that, at Sitryx he led multiple programs from IND through first-in-human studies under a collaboration with Eli Lilly.
Before that, he spent 15 years at the European pharmaceutical company UCB in R & D roles of increasing seniority. Dr. Foerch is an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Francis Crick Institute in London, holds a PhD from EMBL Heidelberg, and completed postdoctoral training at the same institute.
Nxera stresses that it maintains a strong cash position. Chris Cargill, President and CEO of Nxera, said: “Nxera has built a solid business over the past decade, with a highly experienced team in Japan alongside world-class discovery and development capabilities in the UK.
“We have also created a powerful discovery platform in NxWave™, which has enabled us to generate one of the most extensive pipelines of GPCR-targeted programs in development in the biopharmaceutical industry.
“We will maintain global leadership by prioritising higher-probability, high-return programs and deploying resources with discipline and speed.
“The actions we are announcing today will simplify how we work, accelerate momentum in programs with clear clinical and commercial potential and strengthen our operating leverage. We have set an ambitious target in our 2030 vision, and we have confidence that the measures we are announcing today put us on the right path to achieving those goals.”
