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After announcing yesterday that it will be reorganizing and closing 6 of 20 R&D sites worldwide, Pfizer/Wyeth announced today that as many as 2000 R&D scientists will lose their jobs. I suspect that others will lose their jobs in the next few months or so.
The Pfizer/Wyeth and Merck Schering Plough mergers signal the beginning of the end of the traditional vertically integrated pharmaceutical business model. It is evident that pharma is shifting away from its almost 100 year focus on R&D and manufacturing to less labor intensive and costly activities like advertising, marketing, sales and distribution—things that drug makers have excelled in the past decade or so. Innovation will likely no longer come from within but from external sources including academia, biotechnology companies and third party vendors including CROs and CMOs.
While the loss of thousands of R&D scientists will have little impact on the productivity and operations of life sciences companies themselves, it has serious implications for academic institutions that train life sciences graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. In the past, PhD scientists who were unable to find academic jobs too refuge and found gainful employment in the life sciences industry. However, American industrial R&D jobs are becoming harder and harder to find as larger companies continue to outsource those activities, to Asia, South America and Eastern Europe. And, the competition for the remaining jobs is becoming increasingly fierce. Put simply, academic institutions have to begin to realize that we no longer need as many PhD-trained life scientists as we have in the past. At present, there is a glut of PhD life scientists in the US, many of whom can’t find jobs. Perhaps, this should be taken into account before graduate school admissions committees determine the number of new graduate students they will admit next year.
Until next time...
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!!!
After announcing that it would lay off about 4,000 workers two weeks and then refusing to disclose which facilities would be affected, the British drug maker, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) today revealed that several hundred workers at it Harlow, Essex facility will lose their jobs. 
Despite the announcement late last week in the London Sunday Times that 
