Genentech will close its cancer immunology research department, and unit head and renowned cell biologist Ira Mellman, who has been with the company for 17 years, will depart in the coming months.
The company’s cancer immunology research function will be merged with molecular oncology research, which is currently led by Frederic de Sauvage, to form one single cancer research body within Genentech Research and Early Development (gRED), a spokesperson for the Roche subsidiary confirmed to Fierce Biotech.
“This decision was based on our on-the-ground assessment of how best to seize current scientific opportunities in the field, rather than on any Roche-wide decisions about cancer immunology,” the Genentech spokesperson said. “We continue to believe cancer immunology is an important part of our oncology programs.”
Besides the oncology shakeup, the discovery functions within Genentech’s department of human pathobiology & OMNI reverse translation group also will move to the departments of immunology and neuroscience in research biology.
The reorganization will impact “a limited number” of employees, the spokesperson said.
The move comes after Genentech’s clinical work in cancer immunotherapy has struggled to yield satisfactory results in some areas. Most notably, the company’s closely watched anti-TIGIT program tiragolumab is hanging by a thread after several failures, including most recently in first-line nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer as part of a combination with PD-L1 inhibitor Tecentriq. The company also in April terminated an allogenic cell therapy collaboration with Adaptimmune.
Mellman was instrumental in the discovery of endosomes, which are organelles responsible for transporting proteins and other cargo in the cell. After leading the cell biology department of Yale University, Mellman joined Genentech in 2007, initially as VP of research oncology. These days, a lot of his research is focused on PD-1/L1 mechanisms, TIGIT and dendritic cells in cancer immunology.
Besides Tecentriq and tiragolumab, Mellman was also credited for leading Roche’s entry into cell therapy and for steering Roche’s partnership with BioNTech on the latter’s mRNA personalized cancer vaccine.
“Ira’s impact extends beyond Genentech, as he is widely recognized as an international leader in the field of cancer immunology, having made seminal contributions to our understanding of the immune system and its role in cancer,” the Genentech spokesperson said. “We wish him well as he takes on his next scientific challenge.”
Genentech boasts “the broadest and most diverse pipeline in oncology with more than 20 immunotherapy molecules,” the company said on its website.
More broadly, Roche has been taking a hard look at its pipeline recently, leading to the termination of 20% of its total new molecular entities since the third quarter of 2023, the company said in April. And Genentech has been one of the main drug R&D engines for the Swiss pharma parent.
Also in April, Genentech said it would let go 436 people, or about 3% of its staff, across “several departments,” beginning in June.
The latest shift in Genentech’s cancer immunology department was first reported by Endpoints News.
“The decline of Genentech over the last 10+ years has been sad to watch,” biotech industry investor Brad Loncar wrote Thursday on X.
The departure of a star scientist and the recent changes at Genentech—which prides itself as the world’s very first biotech—once again raised the question of whether it’s necessary for Big Pharma companies to keep large academia-like early translational research organizations such as gRED when buying out assets from small biotechs seems more cost-efficient.
A study published in the journal Drug Discovery Today found that large pharma companies were the sole originator of only 14% of first-in-class cancer drugs approved by the FDA from 2010 through 2020. A recent analysis by the nonprofit think tank Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity found that 36% of 428 FDA approvals originated from large pharma companies.
“Academia does a great job with tissue culture cells or flies or mice, but it doesn’t easily accommodate the types of broad-based interdisciplinary teams that you really need in order to organize experiments using human beings as a biological system,” Mellman said of his move to Genentech in a 2007 interview, when he was also the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cell Biology.
“The brilliance of Genentech is that it melds the rigor and deep commitment to fundamental science that one finds from excellent people coming from the academic world with the discipline, insight, and creativity characteristic of the best of the biotech and pharmaceutical industry,” he added at the time.