Drug giant Pfizer is to slash up to 8% of its research staff, the company has announced.

This follows on from last year’s announcement that the pharma company would be narrowing its focus onto certain specific disease areas such as diabetes, and cutting and running from others, such as heart disease.

“R&D is the lifeblood of pharma but Pfizer has not been that productive. So it may be a case that they are trying to eliminate non-productive assets,” Les Funtleyder, an analyst for Miller Tabak, told CNN. “I would imagine the scientists would say the problem is with management.”

By the end of 2009, between 5% and 8% of Pfizer’s 10,000 researchers will have to have started looking for new jobs (Financial Times). They’re going to have to look hard, as other pharma companies are also laying people off.

Pfizer is also offloading some of its in-development medicines, according to Bloomberg and others:

Pfizer is cleaning out its chemical compound closet as it shifts research to medicines to treat cancer, brain disorders and pain, said Martin MacKay, the New York-based company’s research chief, at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference today in San Francisco. Some of the compounds Pfizer wants to sell have been tested on humans, MacKay said.

Steve Brozak, of WBB Securities, told the Washington Post sacking researchers was “exactly the wrong thing to do”. But one commenter on the In the Pipeline blog thinks more woe is to come for Pfizer scientists:

Rumor on Wall Street is that this is Round 1 of four rounds this year for the researchers. (And this is supposed to be the smallest of the cuts.) Other cuts coming in other parts of the company, too. Expect a lot of pain, and don’t be surprised if many of the researchers employed by PFE now aren’t so employed by this time next year. Death by a thousand cuts?