Roche to shrink product development team, mainly impacting contractors

Roche plans to lay off a few hundred people in its product development team, the pharma confirmed to Fierce Biotech.

The Swiss drug developer chalked the layoffs up to a normal review of the business “to ensure ongoing improvement and sustained readiness,” according to a statement from a company spokesperson on Friday. Roche says it expects “the majority of the proposed headcount reduction to impact external contractors” with less than 6% of the permanent product development team potentially impacted.