More pharma research cut - October 29, 2008
Uh-oh, more trouble at t’mill for pharma. Wyeth, a company that comes under the “drugs giant” moniker, has announced it will stop pursuing R&D in eight of its 14 therapeutic areas, and will ‘focus’ on oncology, inflammation, neuroscience, vaccines, metabolic disorders and musculoskeletal disorders.
The story hasn’t been posted on Wyeth’s website yet but has hit a number of serious news outfits (Bloomberg, WSJ, Reuters).
“This is not a cost-reduction effort at all; the dollars spent and number of personnel won't change," said Wyeth spokesman Michael Lampe in the Reuters report. All the areas that Wyeth is dropping are early stage developments. This announcement, dubbed ‘Project impact’ will see the number of diseases Wyeth is targeting specifically drop from 55 to 27.
The news is also being discussed in the blogosphere (Pharmalot, In the pipeline). According to the comments on one of these blogs 60 job losses are predicted. Which is better than the news from Pfizer and Merck lately – Merck slashed 7.200 jobs last week and Pfizer recently announced it was stopping its cardio research. We watch the pharma industry with interest to see how many other companies continue this trend.
