Downsizing: Biotech Companies Are Catching Up to Big Pharma
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For the past year or so, I have been focusing on the downsizing and layoffs taking place at big pharmaceutical companies. The unprecedented size and scope of these massive layoffs have overshadowed the downsizing and job loss taking place at small to mid-size public and private biopharmaceutical companies. In contrast with most fully-integrated vertical pharmaceutical companies that are flush with cash, most biotech companies—even the likes of Amgen, Genentech, Gilead and others—don’t have the cash reserves to maintain operations in a down economy or when a drug candidate fails in clinical development. This coupled with the lack of venture and private equity capital has been causing biopharmaceutical employees to lose sleep in recent months.
Over the past few days, two CA-based biopharmaceutical companies announced major layoffs. The first, San Jose-based Xenoport, announced that it plans on cutting its 222 person workforce by 50% over the next few months. According to company executives, the layoffs are necessary because the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) failed to grant approval to its lead drug candidate Horizant, a treatment for restless leg syndrome. This will allow the company to annually save about $15.6 million and focus its development efforts on other products that are in Phase II clinical development.
San Francisco-based Exelixis today announced that it would cut about 40% of its workforce or 270 employees to focus on development of its late stage drug candidates. The biotechnology company, which expects to reduce its 2011 cash expenditures by about $90 million, said it would focus on the development of its anti-cancer drugs XL184, XL147 and XL765. These layoffs are occurring less than a year after the company announced a potential $1.0 billion deal with Sanofi-Aventis in which Sanofi invested $140 million upfront to license two of its oncology drug candidates.
Things are also not going well for the numerous small to midsize biotechnology companies in the Seattle area. According to Xconomy, a company that tracks layoffs in and around Seattle, the region has shed 4,500 biopharmaceutical industry jobs since 2008.
Finally, BNET compiled a top biotech layoff list for 2009. The notables that made the list are shown below.
- Sepracor (530). The layoffs represented 20 percent of Sepracor’s workforce, and another 410 contract sales reps also got the axe. The restructuring apparently worked and Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma the company later in 2009.
- Allergan (460). This represented a five percent reduction in the company’s workforce.
- Genmab (300). Arzerra (ofatumumab) the company’s leukemia drug won FDA approval a week before layoffs were announced (go figure). But Genmab wanted to cut manufacturing and late-stage clinical work to refocus on antibody discovery.
- Oscient Pharmaceuticals (280). Oscient cut about 100 jobs in February, 2009 to entice acquisition partners. When that didn’t work, the firm cut another 180 in June as it dumped the sales force for its two marketed products. Cornerstone Therapeutics later picked up Oscient’s antibiotic Factive during bankruptcy.
- Amylin Pharmaceuticals (200). After cutting 340 jobs at the end of 2008 amid declining diabetes drug sales and regulatory delays, Amylin eliminated 200 sales reps in mid-2009.
While these represent the largest layoffs that occurred in 2009, thousands of other biopharmaceutical employees also lost their jobs. If the life sciences sector is the part of the economy that has been relatively unscathed during the economic downturn, imagine what life must be like for employees in other sectors that have been hard hit!
Until next time...
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting ????
Ed Silverman, who runs the 
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pharmaceutical industry and seemingly getting tougher..jpg)
Things are just not going well for Natick, MA-based device manufacturer Boston Scientific. Yesterday, the company announced that it lost $1.1 billion in the fourth quarter this year. The losses mainly stem from the company’s $1.73 billion 
After announcing that it would 
Many people, most notably GlaxoSmithKline employees, assumed that GSK management would disclose at its earning call yesterday how many people would lose their jobs in the company’s next round of job cuts announced earlier this week. Surprisingly, management decided not to announce the breadth and depth of layoffs ostensibly increasing the drama and anxiety of its employees about the cuts..jpg)
The past couple of weeks have been awful for employees at 
Despite the announcement late last week in the London Sunday Times that 
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It is getting difficult to keep track of the job cuts that are happening almost daily at Pfizer. A quick perusal of the job cuts to date indicate that the company has eliminated about 1200 jobs in the past week;.jpg)
Just when you thought that holding on to a job couldn’t get any worse, Pfizer 
Healthcare informatics (HCI) is one of the fastest growing professions in the US. This is because the Obama administration has allocated billions of stimulus dollars to create electronic healthcare records (EHR) in an attempt to reduce healthcare costs. .jpg)
Governor Deval Patrick and the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center 
Sanofi Aventis asked it entire sales force to remain at home the Monday after Thanksgiving to wait for a phone call to see whether or not they still had jobs. Nice way for the affected employees to spend Thanksgiving, eh?
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After 
Employees of Pfizer/Wyeth were notified earlier today of impending changes and consolidation that will be taking place at the newly combined company. According to internal sources, Cambridge, MA, Groton, CT and Pearl River, NY will be the main centers of the combined company’s East Coast operations and San Francisco and La Jolla/San Diego CA will represent West Coast operations. In Europe, the research facility in Sandwich, England will be the main R&D center with a network of smaller sites, in locations such as Montreal, Ottawa, Cambridge UK, Aberdeen UK, and Dusseldorf, Germany providing expertise in vaccine production and biomanufacturing. The company’s China R&D Center in Shanghai will remain the focal point of operations in Asia,
Over the past year or so, more graduate students and postdoctoral fellows have been asking me about management consulting careers in the life sciences. I spent several years working as an independent management consultant and while it was a great experience the revenue stream was unreliable at best and the ability to work was highly contingent upon the economy. However, I can assure that my experiences as an independent management consultant were marketing different than those of consultants who work at the consulting firms like McKinsey or the Boston Consulting Group. For those of you interested in life style of a high-powered management consultant I highly recommend you visit their websites for more info. 
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it would eliminate as many as 8,200 jobs, or 7% of its work force, to help the company cope with what it expects will be a slow economic recovery amid damped demand for drugs, medical devices and consumer products. J&J employs about 117, 000 workers globally. While the job cuts will be global, many losing their jobs will be outside of the US. 
I was sitting around minding my own business (well sort of) and I received the following e-mail message. People must be reading BioJobBlog or something!.jpg)
Cliff Mintz, .jpg)
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The fourth quarter is over, earnings are being announced and new budgets for the upcoming fiscal year are being evaluated and tweaked. This means that we have officially entered layoff and closure season. Isn’t it great that big companies wait until right before the holiday season to let employees know whether or not they will have a job next year?.jpg)
In a previous
I don’t want to brag but I have been touting career options in health informatics and health information technology (HIT) for the past year or so. Today, I came across a post by CareerBuilders declaring health informatics and HIT are the hottest new career trends to hit the market in recent years. As the drive towards digitizing medical and healthcare records continue, there will be literally thousands of job opportunities for people with the right skill set. This is what the post had to say about health informatics and HIT careers and job opportunities. .jpg)
An annual survey conducted by Science magazine and the American Association has identified the 
According to a report yesterday, 
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The bad news is that the US unemployment rate is close to 10 percent. The good news is that the government is looking for scientists at FDA, NIH, USDA, CDC, EPA and other agencies. For those of you who haven’t applied for a government job, the process can be daunting and overwhelming. To alleviate some of the pain, Cyndi Fischer, MSA at the 
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported today that Pennsylvania state legislators, spearheading efforts to retain jobs in the state after the $68 billion Pfizer-Wyeth merger closes next month, said they were fairly confident many positions would remain at Wyeth's regional operations in Collegeville, Great Valley and other sites. Wyeth employs about 4,500 people in the region - about 3,600 in Collegeville and 900 in Great Valley and elsewhere.
The Belgian chemical manufacturer Solvay .jpg)
The competition for National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant funding has been intensifying over the past five years or more. In the past, NIH had gone to extraordinary lengths to insure that senior investigators didn’t lose their funding so as to not hinder the progress of long standing research programs. However, in recent years, NIH funding managers have eschewed the unwritten policy of preferentially funding established investigators in favor of younger ones! According to an 
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Pharmaceutical sales representatives, along with R&D scientists have been the largest casualties of recent downsizing that has been sweeping the life sciences industry. Increasing regulatory scrutiny, decreasing numbers of new drug approvals and an increasing reliance on e-based technologies to sell drugs have almost rendered the traditional pharma rep obsolete. .jpg)
Reuters reports 
Back in the late 1990s, applying for jobs online was all the rage! The technology was new and fresh and applying for jobs online was fast and easy. Companies raced to build corporate websites for prospective job applicants, major job boards like Monster and Careerbuilder were launched and human resources professionals though they were ushering in a “new era of employee recruitment and retention.” While applying for jobs online once seemed like a panacea for both job seekers and corporate employers, it never has lived up to all the fanfare and hype!
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Word on the street suggests that Roche has severed its relationship with the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) the trade group that represents and lobbies on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry. The recent purchase of Genentech must have convinced the venerable 100 year old pharmaceutical company that proteins not small molecule drugs are the key to its future..jpg)
As many of you may know, I attend national science meetings where I offer resume critiquing services and give career development seminars on topics ranging from resume writing to alternate career opportunities for life scientists. Frequently, I critique the resumes of 
As expected, Merck announced today that it would eliminate an additional 16,000 job after the merger with Schering Plough is completed. The combined company is trying to get its headcount down to around 90,000 employees. The new job cuts represent a 15% reduction in the workforce of the combined company..jpeg)
After months of complaints by university officials and scientific organizations, the US State Department .jpg)
By now, I think that most BioJobBlog readers understand that the job market for life scientists is lousy and that it isn’t likely to improve anytime soon. I know that many of you have spent close to 10 years training for a shot at an R&D job but the reality is that everybody needs to work to put food on the table—whether or not you find a job in your chosen profession. To that end, now may be a good time for those of you who are finding it difficult to land a job to consider one more year of training to get a certificate in a field that keeps you in science but not in R&D..gif)
Over the past three years, more than
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced on Wednesday that it was creating a new program aimed at “finding treatments for some of the 6,800 rare diseases that collectively affect about 25 million Americans.” 
Medtronics, the world's largest medical-device company, .jpg)
The New York Times reported 
I just arrived in New Orleans to participate in this year's Experimental Biology meeting. I will be giving talks on career development for bioscientist and providing resume critiquing for job seekers. This is my first time back to New Oreleans after Katrina and it ought to be interesting to check things out.(1).jpg)
Roche announced Tuesday that it will replace Arthur Levinson, PhD, Genentech’s current CEO and American biotechnology pioneer, with Pacal Soriot, DVM, MBA who currently leads Roche’s worldwide commercial operations. Dr. Levinson will become Chairman of Genentech’s newly configured board of directors but no longer have control over day-to-day operations at the company. Mr. Soriot will become CEO of Genentech and head all of Roche’s pharmaceutical activities in the US. Some of the other changes that will occur at the company include: Susan Desmond-Hellmann, Genentech’s president of product development, will move into an advisory role after the middle of this year. Genentech CFO David Ebersman is leaving the company and Ian Clark, who heads commercial operations for Genentech, will be chief marketing officer of Roche’s pharma division..jpg)
Are you a life sciences or healthcare professional with a passion for computers, IT or software development? If so, you might want to consider a career in health informatics—one of the hottest, new fields in the life sciences and healthcare industries. Health informatics specialists typically have expertise in medical records and claims, clinical care and programming. In other words, they have a foot in two worlds— medicine and technology — and can easily bridge the often daunting gap between them. It is important to point out that there is a difference between healthcare IT and informatics personnel. The health IT people run the servers and install software, but the informatics people are the ones who analyze and interpret clinical/ medical information and work with clinical and other healthcare staff to advise and help them.
Since 2007, approximately 80,000 pharmaceutical jobs have been eliminated. The recent consolidation in the industry, e.g., Merck-Schering, Pfizer-Wyeth and Roche-Genentech suggests that many more life sciences jobs will be lost over the next year or so. Typically, to avoid law suits and possible discrimination claims, most companies will layoff a mixture of experienced and entry level employees that cover the racial, religious and age spectra. For those of you who may not know, Americans who are 40 and older constitute a “protected class of employees.” In other words, companies that layoff employees cannot disproportionately give pink slips to employees 40 years of age or older. This law was enacted because older employees typically have higher salaries and have accrued more benefits and vacation time than their more junior counterparts and eliminating them can drastically cut costs. While most companies are careful to layoff a mixture of junior and senior employees during large layoffs, a quick perusal of the demographics of employees who lose their jobs reveals that many of them are older, more experienced workers. Sacrificing a few entry level employees (to prevent any red flags) is worth it to the accountants who charged with cutting costs and orchestrating large corporate layoffs.
The US economy has lost about 7.1 million jobs since December 2007 and nationwide unemployment is hovering around 8.5 percent. Despite the lost of about 80,000 pharmaceutical jobs over the past three years and unprecedented consolidation taking place in the life sciences sector—Merck-Schering Plough, Pfizer-Wyeth and Roche-Genentech—the job prospects for scientists at biotech companies, medical devices and diagnostics, and government appear to be stronger than anticipated. While drug discovery and sales jobs may be scare, there are rapidly emerging opportunities in the fields of medical communications, regulatory affairs, biomanufacturing, clinical trials management , bioengineering, medical devices/diagnostics and website development and management..gif)
Rumors are rife that Novartis is going to purchase Lexington, MA-based Cubist for $1.6 billion. Wall Street analysts are speculating that Novartis may announce the deal as early as Monday..jpg)
It’s official! Roche has secured more than 96 percent of shares in Genentech Inc, completing its $46.8 billion buyout of the U.S. biotech group. It now holds some 93 percent of outstanding Genentech shares, a further 3 percent are guaranteed to be delivered within the next three business days and it will integrate the U.S. biotech group as soon as possible.
The old baseball adage which says that “you can’t tell the players apart without a program” is particularly apt when it comes to tracing the M &A activity that led to the creation of some today's largest pharmaceutical companies.
As you all know by now, 
Late Thursday, after 8 months of difficult and often acrimonious negotiations, Genentech’s board finally caved and agreed to allow Roche to purchase the remaining 44% of the outstanding Genentech shares that it doesn’t already own. The price: $95 per share—less than the $112 per share that Genentech’s board and management team wanted —but better than the $86.50 per share that was tendered last fall.
Late last week, Roche raised the price of its hostile offer to buy out .jpg)
Merck announced today that it was buying Schering Plough, the Kenilworth-New Jersey based drug maker, for $41.1 billion. The deal comes only six weeks after Pfizer said that it would purchase NJ-based Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. Superficially, the deal may make sense for the two struggling drug makers—they co-market the cholesterol-lowering drug Vytorin and also have collaborations in the respiratory diseases area. Also, Schering Plough has the European rights to the anti-arthritis drug Remicade and its 2007 purchase of the Dutch biopharmaceutical company Organon Biosciences NV provides access to several potential biotechnology drugs. Nevertheless, the impending merger will ultimately result in job losses and higher unemployment in the state of New Jersey..jpg)
Talk about a rough week. First, on Monday,.jpg)
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The ink hasn’t had time to try on the deal sheet and Pfizer already has announced what the impact of its acquisition of Wyeth will have on the combined company. Here’s what to expect: Pfizer will shed at least 19,000 jobs from it newly combined work force of 128,000 employees; it will slash its stock dividend by 50%; and it will take a $2.3 billion charge to settle a federal investigation over off label promotion of its former pain drug Bextra. 
Pfizer's board of directors voted on Sunday evening to acquire Wyeth for $65 billion. While this may help to assuage some of Pfizer's short term financial problems, like the loss of Lipitor in 2011,the deal will not help the combined company in the long run. 
Pfizer is the largest pharmaceutical company in the world. It was able to garner that distinction by going on a decade-long buying spree that began in the mid 1990s. To date, Pfizer has acquired Warner Lambert, Pharmacia and a host of smaller specialty pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Despite these acquisitions, which yielded top selling blockbuster drugs like Lipitor and Celebrex, Pfizer’s stock has never performed up to analyst’s expectations. In fact, while it’s smaller and more nimble pharmaceutical competitor’s stock prices were soaring, Pfizer’s stock price was either flat or falling. While conventional wisdoms suggest that “bigger is always better” this has proven not to be the case when companies, like Pfizer, attempt to win greater market share through mergers and acquisition and also loss sight of their core business.
I watched the Obama inauguration today and like many other Americans I was moved to tears during his speech. A new day is truly dawning in America! The one line that resonated the most for me is when he said he was going to restore American science to its rightful place. My colleague 
While the domino theory was incorrect when it came to the spread of communism during the Cold War, there may be a kernel of truth to it when it is applied to today’s pharmaceutical industry. On Tuesday, Pfizer announced that it would lay off 800 researchers. Not to be outdone by Pfizer,
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I received an e-message from a reader who alerted me about new information and rumors that are swirling about the layoffs announced yesterday by Pfizer. For more info, check out the 
Long rumored, 
Did you know that the top ten pharmaceutical companies in the world spent close to $50 billion dollars last year on R&D? That sum could be used to purchase the entire US biotechnology industry except for the five largest companies—Genentech, Amgen, Gilead Genzyme and Celgene. Further, pharma’s R&D budget is about 4 times the R&D budget of all of the US biotechnology companies combined. According to a
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Making a profit (and a large one at that) is the primary objective and driving principle of capitalism. That said, the for-profit sector is currently in a shambles—mostly due to greed and stupidity of the so-called stewards of the American economy. Maybe it is time for many of us to abandon corporate greed in favor of job opportunities in the more philanthropic and altruistic not-for-profit sector. I was surprised to learn that, despite the current economic downturn, there are growing numbers of jobs at non-for-profit hospitals, clinics, civic organizations and education (pre-school, primary and secondary)..jpg)
For those of you who haven’t been able to keep up with the latest pharma layoffs, I came across an .jpg)
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The relationship between science, education and industry has always been a tenuous one. To learn more about the complexity of this relationship check out this 
Pfizer announced today that it will .jpg)
Over the past few weeks, the blogosphere was rife with rumors and speculation that Pfizer would be laying off additional R&D personnel in December. However, it seems that the layoffs have been .jpg)
I know this is kind of odd, but I have recently begun to wonder which life sciences companies have layed off the most employees this past year. Well, for those of you out there who were also wondering we don't have to wonder any longer because Ed Silverman over at the Pharmalot blog has conveniently compiled a .jpg)
At its annual business briefing, 
Pfizer may announce 
The Pharmalot blog reported today that .jpg)
Late yesterday, drug maker and consumer healthcare giant Johnson and Johnson announced that it was buying 
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I want to let my readers know that a beta-version of 
Astra Zeneca announced today that it would cut 1400 jobs and close several manufacturing facilities worldwide. .jpg)
If you were thinking East Coast cities you would be wrong. Think further west! .jpg)
The Pharmalot blog reported yesterday that .jpg)
Do you ever wonder what the person who you share an office with is making? Or, have you ever wondered what other people think about the CEO of your company? Or, should I consider working at that company? The answers to these questions and more can now be found at a 4-month old website called .jpg)
According to the WSJ Health Blog “Wyeth is overhauling its early-stage research by slashing in half the number of therapeutic areas and diseases for which it will pursue new medicines. The idea is to concentrate on more innovative products and get them to market faster.” Whenever large companies restructure or announce reorganization plans, job cuts are soon to follow. So, if you are a Wyeth employee I recommend updating that resume as soon as possible!
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Back in 1993 when I was looking for an industrial job, I came across an ad for a research scientist at a Philadelphia-based biopharmaceutical company called Neose. Unlike most other biotechnology companies at the time, the company was focused on identifying and discovering drugs against carbohydrate-based targets—a novel idea at the time. Because I had spent the previous seven years working on carbohydrate biochemistry, I applied for the job and I was invited to interview for the position. At the time, Neose was a small, marginally-funded biotech company that was started in 1993 by a cell biologist from the University of Pennsylvania. 
After months of melodrama and acrimonious exchanges between Jim Cornelius and Carl Icahn, Eli Lilly, not Bristol-Myers Squibb, will acquire ImClone and gain access to the multibillion Erbitux franchise. In the end, Carl Icahn, ImClone’s Chairman, got the $70 per share that he wanted for ImClone stock.
New Jersey-based Pharmacopeia, the first-ever combinatorial chemistry company, announced that it had agreed to be purchased by Ligand Pharmaceuticals in a stock deal worth about $70 million. Onetime a leader in combinatorial chemistry and high throughput screening, Pharmacopeia has struggled of late after it jettisoned its profitable molecular modeling division several years ago. While the company was able to advance several of its lead compounds into early phase clinical testing, its longtime business model, predicated on multiple, small discovery deals with large pharmaceutical companies, was unable to provide enough capital to continue to sustain operations.
Carl Icahn wasn’t bluffing—there really was another company conducting due diligence on ImClone. And, true to Mr. Icahn’s word, Eli Lilly finished its due diligence late Wednesday and 
Pfizer announced earlier today .jpg)
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manufacturing facility in Cork Ireland. Approximately 180 people will lose their jobs. 
Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly & Co 
The pharma downsizing bandwagon continues to roll. Today, there are unconfirmed reports that GlaxoSmithKline will eliminate about 350 jobs at its R&D facilities in Philadelphia, PA and Research Triangle Park, NC. The area that will be hardiest hit by the cuts is Glaxo’s oncology program, which has not yield much over the past decade or so.
Bristol-Myers Squibb announced earlier today that its Board of Directors approved a deal to purchase ImClone for $4.5 billion. BMS already owns about 17% of ImClone’s shares and is ImClone’s US marketing partner for Erbitux, a monoclonal antibody treatment for colorectal and head and neck cancers. 
After beating Wall Street expectations and disclosing positive results from an osteoporosis (densomab) clinical trial, 
It was only a matter of time after 
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On the heels of yesterday’s announcement that it wants to buy Genentech, Roche, in a surprise move, .jpg)
Teva and Barr Pharmaceuticals announced today
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I became a medical/science writer after a rather circuitous, unconventional and sometimes, checkered career. Along the way, I learned a few things that I thought would be important to share with other PhDs who are seeking to change careers, t broaden their horizons and or simply to bring home a paycheck! I am sure that I missed a few things but here are my top 10 reasons to consider a career in medical/science writing:
Yesterday Pfizer announced that it would layoff 275 employees
Pfizer is at it 
The social development of the web 2.0 has largely bypassed science. Hugely popular websites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, Delicious and the like have millions of members and generate huge amounts of traffic. But those who use these sites come from all walks of life. None are devoted solely to science. 
Siemens, the German conglomerate that manufactures everything from locomotives to medical imaging devices, officially announced on Tuesday that it will be sacking 4% of it workforce or 16,750 employees. Although the company didn’t specify where all of the cut would be taking place—it is a global workforce reduction—a company spokesperson did indicate that 1,500 administrative jobs in its healthcare division would be eliminated and most of those jobs are in the US. Many of these cuts will likely take place in the tri-state area (New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania)—not welcome news for the already battered pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries in the region.
According to a
Siemens, the Germany engineering, electronic and healthcare company is planning to 
For the past 60 years, American science was second to none. However, the US is perilously close to losing that distinction. Put simply, American science, like its economy, is in free fall..jpg)
According to a 
Despite a 
Chalk up one for the good guys (good is a relative term). .gif)
Rumor has it
The consolidation trend in the US life sciences industry continues. Carlsbad, CA-based Invitrogen, a provider of cells, molecular and biochemical probes and reagents used in life sciences research,
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Much like Paul Revere back in the day, there have been repeated, urgent warnings about the impending recession that will strike the US economy. Not surprisingly, the Bush administration has done its best to deny the notion that the moribund US economy is actually in recession. 
Each year Fortune publishes a list of the top 100 companies that it believes are the best to work for. A quick perusal of the 
Novartis announced today
The regulatory problems at Wyeth continue. The US Food and Drug Agency 
Bristol-Myers Squibb announced today that it will purchase California-based Kosan Biosciences for approximately $190 million. Kosan has been developing two classes of oncology drugs known as heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) and epothilones. One of Kosan's Hsp90 compounds is currently in Phase III clinical testing for the treatment of multiple myeloma. 
As a self-anointed career development professional, I frequently read blogs and online articles dealing with jobs and career development advice. That said, I happened upon a piece in Yahoo Education entitled “.jpg)
I came across an interesting article in Forbes Magazine that 
Merck announced last week that it will cut 1,200 sales jobs in the U.S. by the end of July. The company also confirmed a plan to eliminate a small natural products group in Spain and Rahway, NJ. Whereas the salespeople who lost their jobs were given notice by the company, the natural products researchers in Spain (and Rahway) learned of their imminent demise via a power point presentation given by a Merck executive (whose name has not been disclosed).
t layoff at the medical devices manufacturer in over 5 years. According to a press release, slightly over a third of the layoffs will come from the company’s local operations, which has about 8,000 employees. The overall effect of the reorganization will be relatively small—affecting roughly 3% of the company’s worldwide workforce of 39, 500.
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As I mentioned in previous posts, things are simply not going Merck’s way. Merck has been .gif){kind=small}
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seems like nothing is going right for Merck these days. 
I want to thank my esteemed colleague, 
Over the past few days, many drug companies have been reporting their earnings for the first quarter of 2008. Few, if any, 
Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk announced today that it will expand its New Jersey-based North American headquarters. This is welcome news for the state. New Jersey has lost about 10,300 jobs so far this year. And that comes after it added 3,700 jobs last year, its worst performance since 2003. 
Genzyme announced today
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Pfizer the world’s largest and least innovative pharmaceutical company .jpg)
Eli Lilly & Co. 
Millennium employees find themselves in an enviable position that most pharmaceutical and biotechnology employee would die for! Shortly after Takeda announced that it would buy Cambridge MA-based Millennium Pharmaceuticals for $8.8 billion, 
Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., Japan’s largest pharmaceutical manufacturer, announced that it has agreed to buy Cambridge MA-based Millennium Pharmaceuticals for $8.8 billion. Millennium, founded in 1993 by high profile MIT researchers and once heralded as one the most innovative American biotechnology companies, never lived up to analyst’s expectations. That said, the company did develop and win regulatory approval for an anti-cancer drug, 
Genzyme Corp announced yesterday
There has been some confusion surrounding the reporting of results from the Enhance Trial. As you know, the results from this study showed that the cholesterol-lowering drug Vytorin—a combination of Zetia and Zocor (a statin) —was no better than a generic version of Zocor by itself at controlling atherosclerosis..gif)
An editorial published in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine and 
According to a post on the Wall Street Journal Health blog, Wyeth announced today that it is laying off about 1,200 marketing and sales representatives who helped support Protonix, its blockbuster heartburn and acid reflux medication. The job cuts are part of a previously announced “asset reallocation plan” that is designed to reduce the size of the company’s workforce by about 5% this year, and by 10% over the next three years. 
Cambridge, MA-based 
Amgen announced today that Enbrel, its anti-TNF treatment for rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis, is now required to carry a black box on it label warning patients of the possibility of developing tuberculosis (TB). Enbrel’s label already has a warning about the risk of TB and other infections, but gets the more serious warning to suggest screening and monitoring of patients for TB. The Black Box also indicates that TB has been observed in patients using other anti-TNF treatments like Abbott’s Humira and Johnson & Johnson’s Remicade, which contain similar warnings. 
which is estimated to be worth around $7-$9 billion. 
According to Johnson & Johnson, a panel of advisors for the Food and Drug Administration, in a surprise decision, supported keeping Epogen, Procrit and Aranesp from Amgen and Johnson & Johnson on the market for use in cancer patients who are anemic from chemotherapy..jpg)
him when he assumed leadership of the company in May, 2005. At that time, Merck had withdrawn Vioxx from the market, its stock price had plummeted and the company was being sued by tens of thousands of people. Thanks to the launch of several new products, including Vytorin and Gardasil, a brilliantly-conceived Vioxx legal strategy which resulted in a $4.85 billion settlement for much of the litigation, Merck‘s stock price is soaring and has been able to restore some of its former glory.
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to set up manufacturing and research operations in Ireland? In my opinion, the recent Irish pharma and biotech explosion has little to do with luck and everything to do with strategic vision, excellent planning and a well trained, inexpensive workforce.
The repercussions of the Exubera debacle are finally being felt at Nektar Therapeutics. 
Cambridge, Mass-based Targanta Therapeutics 
US Food and Drug Administration regulators 
Things are not going well these days for Wyeth or the US Food and Drug Administration. In the latest of a series of complaints over FDA's safety review of drugs and industry influence on the agency, .jpg)
A federal judge ruled that Amgen
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I inadvertantly misreported the story about Allergan closing an Irish manufacturing facility. I want to thank a reader for correcting the error. The company is closing the production facility in Arkow which manufactures silicon implants. Another facility in Westport produces Botox. I guess getting rid of wrinkles is still de riguer whereas larger breasts may not in vogue anymore..jpg)
Allergan Inc., the maker of 
Wyeth announced yesterday.jpg)
Well, it had to happen sooner or later. .jpg)
Amgen announced yesterday
Hat tip to Ed Silverman over at 
When was the last time that you heard that a company which was acquiring another one was willing to pay employees bonuses to induce them to remain at the company until the acquisition was complete? Usually, acquisitions are followed by corporate right-sizing and job layoffs! Sometimes good things happen to good people!.jpg)
Merck and Schering Plough have taken out two-page ads in several major newspapers defending their cholesterol drugs Zetia and Vytorin.jpg)
Bristol-Myers Squibb announced today.gif)
Still reeling from lawsuits filed last week by ex-sales reps’ alleging improper marking of Enbrel to treat patients with psoriasis, Amgen was subpoenaed on Monday by New Jersey's attorney general regarding allegations that the company promoted Enbrel for unapproved uses.
You gotta give Biogen/IDEC and Elan credit for winning regulatory approval for a product that was previously pulled from the market because of serious and potentially life-threatening side effects. 
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Just what the market needs—another cholesterol control medication. That said you can always count on .jpg)
Remember the 
Just days after hiring its Chairman and former CEO Bob Essner as a highly paid consultant, Wyeth learned on Monday that that 
A Johnson & Johnson Co. plant in Bedford MA that manufactures medical devices
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laxoSmithKline announced today 