DNA and health testing giant 23andMe said it laid off 100 people—14% of its workforce—on Thursday as the company struggles with declining DNA testing kit sales.
The layoffs were company-wide, but did not impact its therapeutics arm, which is developing new drugs through a partnership with U.K.-based pharmaceutical giant GSK, a company spokesperson told Forbes.
In the near term, 23andMe will focus on its core business: selling DNA kits to customers and drug development, while scaling back efforts to recruit patients from 23andMe’s database for clinical trials, the spokesperson said.
23andMe analyzes saliva samples and allows customers to see their family ancestry as well as a map of health risks for certain diseases. Investors have valued the company at $2.5 billion, according to Pitchbook, and it has raised $792 million in venture capital from Google, New Enterprise Associates, Genentech, among others.
