NEW YORK – Sequencing sample prep firm TwinStrand Biosciences has laid off close to half of its workforce, according to reports from former employees.
Since Monday, at least half a dozen former employees on the social networking site LinkedIn said they'd been laid off. Multiple people described the total number of layoffs as being "nearly 50 percent" of the company.
According to LinkedIn, the company had at least 100 employees registered with the site.
TwinStrand did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Seattle-based TwinStrand, a University of Washington spinout, is commercializing duplex sequencing technology, a method that matches sequencing data from complementary strands of a DNA molecule to help reduce errors, which can help identify ultra-rare genomic variants.
The firm raised $50 million in a Series B financing round in May 2021.
It licensed its duplex technology to Roche's Foundation Medicine in November 2020 and sued Guardant Health in August 2021, alleging patent infringement.
Of the employees who announced their termination on LinkedIn, about half were involved in bioinformatics or other data analysis roles.