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Eli Lilly & Co. is offering buyouts to 4,000 U.S. sales representatives to eliminate several hundred jobs and restructure its operations. Sales representatives will be offered four months' pay in addition to the typical Eli Lilly severance package, which ranges from two to 18 months' salary depending on seniority. The company had a total of 40,500 employees at the end of 2008.

Lilly’s best-selling drugs include Zyprexa for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, Cymbalta for depression, Byetta for type 2 diabetes, and Evista for osteoporosis. The patent supporting Zyprexa, which bought in $4.7 billion in revenue last year, will expire in 2011. The patents on the company's next three top drugs —Cymbalta, Humalog insulin, and cancer drug Gemzar —are set to expire in 2013.

The restructuring is expected to start in mid-November and take effect in January.

Sales reps and R&D scientists have suffered the most during pharma’s recent three year downsizing binge. While many R&D jobs have been shipped overseas, pharma sales reps might consider a new career in biotechnology drug sales. Growth in biotechnology and personalized medicine drugs is expected to increase for the foreseeable future.

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Reuters reports that French drug maker Sanofi-Aventis (S-A) beat analysts second-quarter earning forecasts and that next year’s earnings will likely benefit from increased demand for its new H1NI swine flu vaccine. The company is the largest flu vaccine manufacturer in the world. Yet, despite surging profits, S-A continues to restructure and cut jobs in an effort maintain its stock share price. —and an “impeccable source”— that US managers are in France discussing cuts to American operations. The cuts are expected to be announced during the first week of August. More bad news for the US economy and  tens of thousands of American pharmaceutical employees who have already lost their jobs.

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Medtronics, the world's largest medical-device company, announced today that it will lay off 1,500-1,800 employees after posting a fiscal fourth-quarter profit that plunged 69 percent on slipping sales,restructuring and other charges. About 400 employees already have accepted buyout offers and will leave the company by the end of the month.

Until now, the medical devices and diagnostic industries, unlike pharma and biotech had had remained unscathed by the current economic downturn. Medtronic’s financial woes are mainly a result of questions about its implantable devices which have come under fire recently because of safety concerns. Nevertheless, don’t be surprised if you see other medical devices and diagnostic companies begin to layoff workers as the financial crisis deepens and medical and healthcare costs continue to rise.

Hat tip to Iguana Bio.

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Last month, 240,000 American workers lost their jobs. Many of these jobs were lost as a result of corporate lay offs and restructuring—things that are likely to continue as we attempt to navigate a course through these financially troubling times. Unlike being fired, lay offs and job losses that result from restructuring have little to do with individual job performances and everything to do with budget constraints and reductions. That said how should a person who is laid off from a job deal with it on a resume when looking for a new job? I found a well crafted article that provides some ideas and solutions to deal with this often vexing problem.

Read and learn!

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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!

People close to the R&D restructuring (part of a larger plan, dubbed Project Impact) said the overall number of scientific jobs won’t change under the plan but some scientists will be cut because their skills aren’t transferable to other areas. Wyeth will eliminate discovery work in women’ health, reduce its therapeutic areas from 14 to 6 and continue to focus vaccines and biologics, where it has had great success with its pediatric pneumococcal vaccine, Prevnar, and the anti-inflammatory biologic Enbrel.

Wyeth joins several pharmaceutical companies, including Bristol-Myers Squibb and Pfizer, which have already decided to narrow the focus of their development efforts and focus more on biotechnology products. Don’t be surprise if other pharmaceutical companies announce similar restructuring plans. I predict that within 10 years or so, pharma companies will no conduct basic discovery research and abandon their internal pipelines. Instead, they will become drug “clearing houses” that specialize in developing products that were either purchased or in-licensed from smaller biotechnology and specialty pharmaceutical companies.

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 Merck announced today that as part of its ongoing restructuring plan to cut costs it will eliminate approximately 7,200 positions — 6,800 active employees and 400 vacancies — across all areas of the Company worldwide by the end of 2011.  This amounts to a 12 percent reduction in the company’s workforce. About 40 percent of the total reductions will occur in the United States.  To streamline management layers across the Company, Merck will reduce its total number of senior and mid-level executives by approximately 25 percent.  These positions are in addition to the 10,400 positions.  As of Sept. 30, Merck has approximately 56,700 employees. In addition to the layoffs, Merck will close three research facilities; one in Tsukuba, Japan; another in Pomezia, Italy and one in Seattle Washington by the end of 2009.

Merck expects the 2008 cutbacks to save the company $3.8 billion to $4.2 billion over the next five years. BioJobBlog reported several weeks ago that Merck had been quietly laying off employees since September. I suspect that today’s announcement comes as no surprise to employees who still work at the Company.

New Jersey once dubbed “America’s medicine chest” is starting to look less full!

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Germany’s GPC Biotech announced another round of job cuts as it tries to regroup after its failure to win US approval of its experimental prostate cancer drug satraplatin.

The company said that this latest restructuring will sharpen its focus on oncology clinical development efforts and further reduce costs to extend its cash reserves to cover three years of operating expenses. The restructuring is mainly focused on GPC’s early-stage research activities in Munich and will result in 38 job losses. The remaining work force will be 14 in Munich and 49 in Princeton, New Jersey. These latest cuts come after an announcement in November that the firm was slashing its workforce by over 100.

A GPC Biotech spokesperson also announced that the company is discontinuing internal development of the 1D09C3 monoclonal antibody, which is in Phase I clinical trials for relapsed/refractory B-cell lymphomas. However, RGB-286638, a broad-spectrum cell cycle kinase inhibitor, is expected to enter the clinic within the next six months. 

Things are looking pretty dicey at GPC Biotech.

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According to Ed Silverman at Pharmalot the newly-formed executive steering committee at Sanofi-Aventis sent a letter to its R &D employees it will take care of implementing “strategic moves,” apportioning resources, overseeing overall management.

A Sanofi spokesman said “is a condensed structure, designed to facilitate quick decision making.” Yeah right–look for some corporate right sizing, allocation of strategic resources and job cuts at the French drug maker.

On another note, West Pharmaceutical Services, a Lionville, PA-based Company announced that it would shed 250 jobs or 13% of its work force as part of a restructuring program. A company spokesperson said it will reduce spending throughout the segment by consolidating two tool production operations into one facility, in Scottsdale, Ariz., and by reductions and consolidations at other production, engineering and administrative operations in North America.

Until next time….

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!

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