在“生物技术寒冬”中，波士顿的初创企业、工作岗位和科学正在被席卷而去

【中美创新时报2025年9月17日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）近几个月来，包括 Kojin Therapeutics、Abata Therapeutics 和 iTeos Therapeutics 在内的大波士顿本地公司纷纷倒闭，还有许多其他公司削减了规模（和员工人数），这威胁到从癌症到自身免疫性疾病等各种疾病的治疗进展。据人力资源公司 Challenger, Gray, and Christmas 称，今年 8 月，大波士顿地区制药公司裁员 19,000 人，比其他任何行业都多，比 2024 年 8 月增加了 142%。《波士顿环球报》记者卡拉·米勒对此作了下述报道。

8月的一个星期五，多米尼克·维赫勒（Dominique Verhelle）通过Zoom被解雇了。三天后的星期一，她意识到这是她人生中第一次失业。

“这是我的宝贝，”维赫勒谈到她曾担任首席执行官的生物科技初创公司 NextRNA Therapeutics 时说道。“我创建了这家公司。”

2020年，维赫勒辞去了武田制药的工作，决定将丹娜—法伯癌症研究所的研究成果商业化。NextRNA筹集了数千万美元，在布莱顿租用了实验室空间，并于去年与制药巨头拜耳达成协议，合作研发癌症治疗的新方法。

但疫情过后，生物科技生态系统开始恶化。资金变得稀缺；Verhelle 开始觉得自己把所有时间都花在了筹款上。NextRNA 的实验室曾经挤满了其他公司的科学家，如今却感觉越来越空旷。

拜耳与 NextRNA 的合作包括制药公司的资金投入，但也附带一项条件：NextRNA 必须在今年 7 月之前提供特定的数据包。

“每个人都尽了自己最大的努力。周末加班，工作非常非常努力，”维赫勒说道。

但在七月中旬的一次全体会议上，维赫勒告诉他们，一切结束了。尽管她仍然对这项科学的突破性进展充满热情，但团队需要更多时间来处理数据。而且维赫勒也筹不到更多的资金了。

和许多努力生存的小型生物技术公司一样，NextRNA 连同所有 27 名员工一起被收购了。（Verhelle 表示，他们的研究方向——专注于一类不产生蛋白质的 RNA 亚群——拜耳或许仍会继续推进。）

这只是该行业急剧衰退导致企业和工作岗位流失的一个例子。近几个月来，包括 Kojin Therapeutics、Abata Therapeutics 和 iTeos Therapeutics 在内的本地公司纷纷倒闭，还有许多其他公司削减了规模（和员工人数），这威胁到从癌症到自身免疫性疾病等各种疾病的治疗进展。

据人力资源公司 Challenger, Gray, and Christmas 称，今年 8 月，制药公司裁员 19,000 人，比其他任何行业都多，比 2024 年 8 月增加了 142%。

“我有很多同事要么关闭公司，要么裁员，要么无法筹集资金，”总部位于波士顿的Seaport Therapeutics公司创始人兼首席执行官达芙妮·佐哈尔(Daphne Zohar)表示。“所以，大量寻找工作的人会扰乱整个生态系统。”此外，她还表示，公司中“蕴藏着如此多的知识”，而通常没有好的方法去获取它们。

千禧制药公司前首席执行官黛博拉·邓西尔 (Deborah Dunsire) 在生物技术领域工作了三十多年，她表示，她从未经历过如此艰难的环境。

她指出：“我们以前也经历过经济衰退，但生物技术行业的寒冬没有像这次这样持续这么久。”

邓西尔常驻韦尔斯利，担任东北大学董事会成员。她说，她亲眼目睹“一些前景光明的技术和产品……就这样被关停了”。有时，这些资产会被廉价收购，“但通常情况下，情况并非如此。所以我深感失落。你会看到，有些创始人可能已经努力了五六七年，真正实现了一个科学理念，并将其发展成可以在临床试验中用于患者的产品。但他们最终却无法完成这段旅程。”

邓西尔表示，近几十年来，我们见证了免疫疗法等尖端技术的出现。但从概念到获批的药物之路漫长，她担心变革性药物的资金支持力度如今已不如从前。

那么，我们究竟失去了什么？行业组织BIO新兴公司和经济增长高级副总裁布拉德·扎克斯（Brad Zakes）表示，小公司一直在研发一系列“前景光明的疗法——无论是针对阿尔茨海默病、肿瘤还是囊性纤维化”。失去这些努力将导致药物研发线更加薄弱，未来几年患者可能看不到更多突破性药物。“这才是真正的悲剧，”扎克斯指出。

专家表示，由于生物技术行业面临诸多不确定因素，今年的“生物技术寒冬”尤为严峻。

FDA经历了无数次变革。特朗普政府——以及之前的拜登政府——都表示有意对药品实行价格上限。由于关税，生产药品所需的原材料成本可能会上涨。（尽管大幅削减研究经费最终会影响生物技术，但其全部影响可能还需要数年时间才能知晓。）

“我们将看到该行业的失业率在一段时间内处于令人担忧的水平，”在生物技术领域工作了数十年并担任风险投资家的格蕾丝·科隆 (Grace Colón) 表示。“很多人将很难找到新的全职工作。我认为他们不得不暂时求助于咨询和合同工。”

邓西尔表示，波士顿“吸引了来自世界各地的人才”。但她警告说：“如果我们关闭这些公司，我们将开始失去大量高薪工作。到那时，人们就不得不考虑离开马萨诸塞州。我认为每个拥有生物技术中心的州都会面临这个问题，但生物技术中心是马萨诸塞州经济的重要组成部分。”

邓西尔也对大学在财政压力下培育新理念的能力深感担忧。她列举了哈佛大学以及其他院校正在发生的大规模人才流失。她认为，这些“对进入我们博士和硕士项目的外国毕业生来说是一个挑战”。“我认为这将影响推动发现的‘原料’。”

在美国生物科技面临逆风之际，中国生物科技正在蓬勃发展。扎克斯表示，传统上，美国被视为“生物科技产业的瑰宝”。但“我们现在看到的是，中国正在开始弥补不足，并在创造一个快速、高效且相对低成本的生物科技环境方面做得非常出色。我们必须牢记这一点。”

NextRNA 前首席执行官 Verhelle 强烈要求支付员工遣散费， 因此她决定以允许其支付遣散费的方式关闭公司。但她承认，她的前员工现在必须应对波士顿严峻的生物技术就业市场，她说，这一前景让他们“非常担忧”。

维赫勒说她已经在考虑下一家公司了。但她指出，这次她可能会组建一个规模较小的团队，并将更多工作外包出去。

她说，四年前，如果有年轻人问她应该学什么，她会告诉他们：“‘哦，去学生物，去学化学。那里有很多工作机会。你会有一份不错的职业。’但现在，我想我不会再这么说了，因为我会想：‘天哪，我不知道你四年后还能不能找到工作。’”

题图：7月30日，波士顿芬威街区布鲁克莱恩大道109号的景象。随着生物科技行业的衰落，空置的实验室和倒闭的公司随处可见。David L Ryan/《环球邮报》员工

附英文报道：

In ‘biotech winter,’ Boston startups, jobs, and science are being swept away

By Kara Miller Globe Correspondent,Updated September 15, 2025

A view of 109 Brookline Ave. in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood on July 30. Empty lab space and shuttered companies abound as the biotech industry has declined.David L Ryan/ Globe Staff

On a Friday in August, Dominique Verhelle was laid off over Zoom. Three days later, on a Monday, she realized it was the first time in her life without a job.

“It’s my baby,” Verhelle said of NextRNA Therapeutics, the biotech startup where she had been CEO. “I created the company.”

In 2020, Verhelle left her job at Takeda Pharmaceutical to take a chance on commercializing research that began at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. NextRNA raised tens of millions of dollars, rented lab space in Brighton, and then, last year, entered into an agreement with the pharmaceutical giant Bayer to partner on new approaches to treating cancer.

But the biotech ecosystem began to deteriorate post-pandemic. Funding became scarce; Verhelle started to feel like she was spending all her time raising money. The lab space that NextRNA worked out of — which had once been bustling with scientists from other companies — felt increasingly empty.

And the Bayer partnership, which included money from the drug company, came with a stipulation: NextRNA had to produce a specific package of data by July of this year.

”Everybody gave the best of what they could do. Working weekends and working really, really hard,” said Verhelle.

But at a town hall in mid-July, Verhelle told them that the end had come. Though she was still enthused about the breakthrough possibility of the science, the team needed more time to work on the data. And Verhelle couldn’t drum up any more money.

Like many small biotechs trying to survive, NextRNA was swept away, along with all 27 employees. (Verhelle said their science — which focused on a subgroup of RNAs that don’t make proteins — might still be advanced by Bayer.)

It’s just one example of the businesses and jobs that have been lost in the industry’s dramatic decline. During recent months, local companies including Kojin Therapeutics, Abata Therapeutics, and iTeos Therapeutics have shut down, and a slew of others have trimmed their ambitions (and headcount), threatening progress on everything from cancer to autoimmune disorders.

In August, pharmaceutical companies laid off 19,000 people, more than any other sector — up a stunning 142 percent from August 2024, according to the staffing firm Challenger, Gray, and Christmas.

“I’ve just got so many colleagues that are shutting down their companies or doing [reductions in force] or are not able to fund raise,” said Daphne Zohar, founder and CEO of Boston-based Seaport Therapeutics. “So you’ve got the ecosystem disruption of a huge amount of people who are going to be looking for work.” Plus, she said, “there’s so much knowledge embedded” in companies, and there’s often no good way to capture it.

Deborah Dunsire, the former CEO of Millennium Pharmaceuticals who has spent more than three decades in biotech, said she’s never experienced an environment as tough as this.

“We’ve seen downturns before,” she noted, but not a “biotech winter that lasted as long as this one has.”

Dunsire, who’s based in Wellesley and sits on the board of trustees of Northeastern University, said she’s watching “promising technologies and promising products … just get shut down.” Sometimes those assets are picked up on the cheap, “but often they’re not. And so I feel that loss. You see founders who have worked maybe for five, six, seven years and really taken a scientific idea and got it to the place where there’s a product that can actually be administered to patients in clinical trials. But then they can’t finish the journey.”

In recent decades, Dunsire said, we’ve seen the advent of cutting-edge technologies, such as immunotherapies. But the road from concept to approved medication is long, and she worries that transformative medicines are not being funded in the way they once were.

So what exactly are we losing? Small companies have been working on a range of “promising therapies — whether it be for Alzheimer’s, oncology, cystic fibrosis,” said Brad Zakes, senior vice president of emerging companies and economic growth at the industry group BIO. Losing those efforts will make the drug pipeline thinner, and patients may see fewer breakthrough medicines in coming years. “That’s the real tragedy,” Zakes noted.

Experts say this “biotech winter” is particularly acute because of the long list of uncertainties facing the industry.

There have been myriad changes at the FDA. The Trump administration — and the Biden administration before it — expressed interest in introducing price caps on drugs. And raw materials needed to make medicines are likely to rise in cost, due to tariffs. (Though broad cuts to research funding will eventually impact biotech, the full effect will likely not be known for years.)

“We are going to see unemployment in the industry be at a scary level for a while,” said Grace Colón, who has worked in biotech for decades, and has invested as a venture capitalist. “It’s going to be hard for a lot of people to find new, full-time positions. I think they’ll have to resort to consulting and contracting for a while.”

Dunsire said that Boston has “attracted talent from all over the world.” But, she warned, “if we are closing companies, we’re going to start to lose a complement of high-paying jobs. And people will then have to think about maybe leaving Massachusetts. I think every state with a biotech center will grapple with this, but it’s a big component of the Massachusetts economy.”

Dunsire is also deeply concerned about the ability of universities to nurture new ideas, given their financial strain. She cited the massive dislocation going on at Harvard, as well as at other schools. These are “challenges to foreign graduates coming into our PhD programs and master’s programs,” she argued. “That, I think, will affect the feedstock that enables discovery.”

At a time when biotech in the US faces headwinds, biotech in China is gaining strength. Traditionally, said Zakes, the US has been viewed as “the gem of the biotech industry.” But “what we’re seeing now is China is starting to pick up the slack and do a very good job at creating an environment where things can be done quickly, efficiently, and relatively inexpensively. And we have to be mindful of that.”

Verhelle, the former NextRNA CEO, felt strongly about paying her workers severance, so she wound down the company in a way that enabled her to do that. But she acknowledges that her former employees now have to tackle Boston’s tough biotech job market, a prospect, she said, that makes them “very worried.”

Verhelle said she’s already thinking about her next company. But, she points out, she might assemble a smaller team this time and outsource more work.

Four years ago, she said, if a young person asked her what they should study, she would tell them: “‘Oh, go into biology, go into chemistry. There is so much work there. You’re going to have a nice career.’ Now, I don’t think I would say that because I’m like: ‘Oh my God, I don’t know if you’re going to have a job in four years.’”