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Eli Lilly and Co. announced last Thursday that it plans on cutting 200 sales and marketing support jobs in its U.S. biomedicine group. More than half of those cuts will take place in Indianapolis, the corporate headquarters of the company. The cuts are the latest wave of the drugmaker's previously announced plans to chop 5,500 jobs worldwide by the end of 2011. The layoffs will be the largest since Lilly eliminated 200 jobs from its research laboratories in March.

Big pharmaceutical companies have been laying off marketing and sales reps for the past three years or so in response to lack of newly approved drugs and anticipated revenue losses from blockbuster drugs that are nearing patent expiry. According to a recent survey conducted by SDI Health the number of pharmaceutical sales reps has shrunk to roughly 81,780 in last year’s third quarter from 101,818 in 2005: a nearly 20 per cent. Further a recent post on the Pharmalot blog revealed that “last year, the number of docs willing to see most reps fell nearly 20 percent, the number of prescribers refusing to see most reps increased by half and the number of management-planned sales calls that were nearly impossible to complete topped 8 million” according to ZS Associates, which monitored interactions involving 500,000 physicians nationwide.

Declining revenues from brand name prescription drugs combined with the changing attitudes of physicians to sales reps suggest that marketing and sales jobs in the pharmaceutical industry may become scare in the future. However, as the biotechnology continues to mature, the need for sales reps with backgrounds in molecular biology and protein-based drugs will continue to increase.

While most physicians are very familiar and comfortable with small molecule prescription drugs, their understanding and familiarity with biotechnology drugs is surprisingly deficient. This suggests that PhD-trained life scientists, who are outgoing and don’t have problems “selling”, may want to consider careers in biotechnology sales or marketing.

Until next time…

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!!

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A rare or orphan disease is defined in the US as one that affects fewer than 200,000 at any given time. It is estimated that there are 6000 to 8000 rare diseases in the world today. Because the number of patients afflicted with orphan diseases is so small, drug companies have historically been reluctant to invest money to discover and develop new treatments for them. The dearth of treatments for rare diseases induced Congress to pass the Orphan Drug Act in 1983 which provided market exclusivity, tax breaks and incentives and regulatory help for companies to development new drugs for orphan disease indications.

While many current blockbuster drugs including recombinant human insulin, growth hormone and erythropoietin originally garnered regulatory approval after receiving orphan status in the late 1980s, most big pharma and biotechnology companies (except Genzyme) largely abandoned orphan drug development until recently. The renewed interest in orphan drug development has been primarily driven by the demise of big pharma’s blockbuster business model that began in the early 2000s. The search for new, non-blockbuster drugs and fresh markets is what induced Pfizer, the world’s largest pharmaceutical company, to recently inked a multimillion dollar deal with Protalix Biotherapeutics, a small biopharmaceutical company developing a new treatment for Gaucher disease—an orphan indication.

Because of renewed interest and the ever increasing need for new orphan drugs, the FDA’s Office of Orphan Products Development is offering an Orphan Drug Designation Workshop that will provide a unique opportunity for all potential drug sponsors—including biotechnology companies, pharmaceutical firms and academic institutions—to learn about the application process for orphan drug designation.

The National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) is a co-sponsor of the workshops, which will take place on February 25-26 at Keck Graduate Institute and August 3-4 at the University of Minnesota.

Participants are encouraged to bring specific product proposals for at least one candidate orphan drug that holds promise for the treatment of a rare disease. A significant portion of the workshop will be dedicated to preparing applications, including one-on-one guidance sessions with FDA staff members. FDA will keep product and disease information confidential.

Final applications can be submitted to the FDA at the close of each workshop. For information or to register:

FDA Workshop Brochure
Registration for the February Workshop

Finally, February 28^th is Rare Disease Day. The event is sponsored by the EURODIS a European advocacy group that promotes awareness and research for rare diseases. NORD and Discovery Health are also sponsoring the day.

Until next time....

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!

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Pfizer may announce new job cuts by the end of next month as the company tries to curb spending before cheaper generic versions of its top- selling drug Lipitor flood the market in 2010. The cuts will likely take place in sales and marketing—Pfizer has cut more than 14, 000 jobs since 2007. 

Aren’t you glad that you didn’t take me up on that land deal in Florida?

Until next time…

Good Luck and Hang On!!!!!!!!!!!

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