Exclusive: Strand lays off 18% of staff as its first mRNA therapies head into the clinic

Less than a week af­ter an­nounc­ing that reg­u­la­tors have green­lit the first tests of its tu­mor-bust­ing mR­NA ther­a­py, Strand Ther­a­peu­tics has laid off rough­ly 18% of its em­ploy­ees, End­points News has learned.

Strand was found­ed in 2017 based on re­search of MIT syn­thet­ic bi­ol­o­gists who fig­ured out how to pro­gram on and off switch­es in­to mR­NA. Those ge­net­ic cir­cuits, as they’re called, of­fered a way to po­ten­tial­ly im­prove the safe­ty and ef­fec­tive­ness of drugs based on the ge­net­ic mol­e­cules.

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