Sanofi is laying off 229 employees from its acquired Blueprint Medicines business in Massachusetts as part of a post-acquisition integration process.
The cuts were detailed in a state Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notice and come roughly a year after Sanofi closed its $9.1 billion buyout of Blueprint Medicines.
The French pharmaceutical giant acquired Blueprint to secure the rare immunology drug Ayvakit and other KIT inhibitor pipeline candidates that formed the core of the deal.
Blueprint Medicines counted 682 full-time employees as of April 15, 2025, according to its last quarterly report filed before Sanofi announced the acquisition in June 2025.
Alongside the headcount reductions, Sanofi is consolidating its Cambridge, Massachusetts footprint by closing two legacy Blueprint sites, including the biotech’s previous global headquarters at 45 Sidney St.
Remaining Blueprint employees will report to Sanofi’s Cambridge Crossing campus, which opened in 2022 following a consolidation of multiple nearby facilities in the Boston area.
A Sanofi spokesperson said the planned changes reflect “thoughtful organizational decisions to align our structure with our long-term business priorities and the needs of our commercial portfolio and pipeline.”
“These decisions were made carefully to position the organization for future success while continuing to deliver for patients,” the spokesperson added, noting that many Blueprint employees are joining Sanofi.
“Those affected by these decisions have already been informed and we will continue to provide multiple avenues of support through their transitions,” the spokesperson said.
According to the WARN notice, the layoffs will be staggered between October 2026 and June 2027, giving affected employees several months of advance notice.
Several former Blueprint senior leaders had already departed before these latest cuts, including former CEO Kate Haviland, who became board chair at cell therapy company GC Therapeutics.
Percy Carter, who served as Blueprint’s chief scientific officer, joined Pfizer as the new leader of preclinical and translational sciences around the start of 2026.
Blueprint’s former chief commercial officer Philina Lee became CEO of AdvanCell, a radiopharmaceuticals company backed by Sanofi Ventures, which participated in the biotech’s recent $315 million series D round.
The Blueprint cuts may signal a broader strategic overhaul under new Sanofi CEO Belén Garijo, who took the role on May 1, 2026, following Paul Hudson’s departure.
In her first earnings call as CEO on July 30, Garijo said she must “fully acknowledge the challenges” confronting Sanofi “and the need to act with a sense of urgency in order to deliver a strategy that improves the perspective of the mid- and long-term growth.”
Garijo has also outlined ambitions to build on a “commitment to drive a culture of greater accountability, high performance, and once again, faster, more agile, fact-based decision-making.”
Large-scale restructuring following major acquisitions is a well-established approach for pharmaceutical companies seeking to eliminate redundancies and reduce operational costs across combined businesses.
It is also not uncommon for incoming pharma CEOs to pursue significant structural changes, with GSK’s Luke Miels recently unveiling a $2.5 billion cost-savings initiative roughly half a year into his own CEO tenure.