Veteran Bay Area biomedical CEO Paul Hastings had to lay off five dozen employees at his company earlier this year, thanks, he said, to what he described as the Trump administration’s attacks on universities, science and medical-research funding, he said.

Trump in an August executive order said federal grants had been insufficiently vetted, and some “propagated absurd ideologies.”

Hastings, whose South San Francisco firm Nkarta engineers “killer cells” to fight disease, said biotechnology companies “across the board” are cutting staff and product-development projects as uncertainty over what comes next rattles investors.

The biotech sector, producing treatments for maladies from rare genetic disorders to cancer, is a key economic engine for the Bay Area, pouring nearly $100 billion into

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