Takeda Pharmaceuticals To Layoff Nearly 250 Cambridge Employees

Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., the largest biopharmaceutical employer in Massachusetts, will lay off 247 employees at its Kendall Square location as part of a sweeping corporate restructuring effort approved last week by its board of directors.

The layoffs, which will begin July 1 and could extend through Dec. 31, 2027, were disclosed in a notice filed with the state under the Massachusetts Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. An additional 387 employees at Takeda locations in other states will also be affected, a company spokesperson said.

The cuts are part of a broader transformation plan that Takeda’s board approved on March 25, aimed at streamlining corporate functions and redirecting resources toward the company’s late-stage drug pipeline. The restructuring is expected to cost the company more than $940 million this fiscal year, but is projected to save more than $1.25 billion annually by 2028.

“These changes are designed to further standardize and simplify ways of working so we can prioritize more resources and strategic technology investments to advance our late-stage pipeline and prepare for multiple launches, including oveporexton, rusfertide and zasocitinib,” a Takeda spokesperson wrote in a Tuesday statement.

The company said it remains committed to supporting employees who lose their jobs, pledging to help them “identify potential opportunities within Takeda and offering transition resources,” according to the statement.

Takeda still has roughly 700 open positions globally — nearly 300 of them in Massachusetts — and expects to create additional roles as it prepares for its upcoming drug launches, the spokesperson added. The company said it will prioritize internal candidates to fill those openings.

The announcement is the latest in a series of reductions Takeda has made in recent years. In 2024 and 2025 combined, the company cut nearly 1,500 positions across facilities in the United States and Austria. Last October, Takeda also announced it would discontinue its cell therapy research program, eliminating more than 130 jobs in Cambridge.

The Kendall Square layoffs add to mounting headwinds facing the biotech industry’s foothold in Cambridge. Since January, Seres Therapeutics announced a 30 percent reduction to its workforce, and scientific instrument manufacturer Thermo Fisher Scientific cut nearly 300 employees from its Cambridge and Plainville offices.

Staff writer Maahi A. Bose can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at maahibose.36. Follow her on X @BoseMaahi.