Pfizer cuts 800 R&D jobs
This article was originally published in Pharmaceutical Approvals Monthly
Executive Summary
With its Lipitor exclusivity cliff looming in 2011, Pfizer is making more staff cuts, laying off 800 research and development employees (roughly 5 to 8 percent of its global research staff) in addition to the corporate-wide 13,500 jobs and eight plants it has shed over the past two years. The move, announced Jan. 13 at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, follows an extensive reorganization of the firm's research program that Pfizer made public last September. The firm has abandoned R&D in heart disease, anemia, osteoarthritis and obesity to focus on other areas, like Alzheimer's, cancer and pain/inflammation (1Pharmaceutical Approvals Monthly November 2008, p. 10). Pfizer expects to have 24-28 Phase III studies by year-end, split evenly between new molecular entities and new indications. That's up from eight such studies in January 2007