The recent decision to merge Genentech’s two cancer departments was made for “scientific reasons,” executives explained to the media this morning.
The Roche unit announced last month that it was merging its cancer immunology research function with molecular oncology research to form one single cancer research body within Genentech Research and Early Development (gRED).
The pharma told Fierce Biotech at the time that the reorganization would impact “a limited number” of employees, against a backdrop of various downsizing rounds at Genentech over the past year.
Aviv Regev, Ph.D., head of Genentech research and early development, told journalists Tuesday morning that the decision to “unify two departments … into a single organization that will do all of oncology” was based on the science.
The previous research structure meant that the molecular oncology department was “really focused on the cancer cell,” while the immunology team “focused on all the other cells.”
“But the tumor is actually an ecosystem of all of these cells, and we increasingly know that a lot of the most exciting things happen in the interfaces between them,” Regev explained. “So we wanted to bring all of this together for scientific reasons.”
Regev likened the move to a “big change” two years ago to unify Genentech’s various computational sciences R&D into a single organization.
“Because in the age of machine learning and AI, it’s not good to have small parts,” she said. “It’s good to have one strong critical mass.”
As to whether there are further restructures in store at Genentech, Regev gave a cautious response.
“I cannot say that if new scientific opportunities arise, we won’t make changes—that would be insanity,” she said. “But I can say that when they do arise, we make them very softly, very deliberately and not very frequently.”
Regev was answering questions during a Q&A session with journalists to mark the opening of Roche’s new research and early development center in the Big Pharma’s hometown of Basel, Switzerland.
The recent restructuring came against a backdrop of some tricky results for Genentech’s clinical work in cancer immunotherapy. The future of the company’s anti-TIGIT program tiragolumab is far from certain after several failures, including most recently in first-line nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer as part of a combination with the PD-L1 inhibitor Tecentriq. In April, the company terminated an allogeneic cell therapy collaboration with Adaptimmune.