Pfizer outlines deep cuts in R&D shakeup

There are new details on the impact of Pfizer's big R&D shakeup [1] are coming in from around the world this morning. There's still no word on exactly how many of the 14,500 people working in research for Wyeth and Pfizer will be laid off. But the company said those cuts would make up a "considerable" segment of the 15 percent job cuts being planned across the board. Overall, Pfizer is shuttering 35 percent of all its global R&D space.

New Jersey is being hit hard, losing Wyeth's Princeton research center and the 450 workers who have jobs there. Most will be laid off. That's one of six R&D facilities being closed. Other operations in New York, North Carolina and the UK are also on the chopping block. Wyeth's Collegeville, PA center--its longtime pharmaceutical headquarters--is being downsized.

The reorganization will have little impact on Pfizer's La Jolla, CA R&D operations, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. A Pfizer spokesperson told the newspaper that the company anticipates little change on the campus, which will be the center of the global giant's cancer research work.

Wyeth's lab in Cambridge, MA will concentrate on inflammation, and a Wyeth facility in Pearl River, NY will do vaccine research. Workers in Groton, CT will be responsible for diseases such as Alzheimer's and diabetes. They'll be joined by employees transferred in from a New London facility, which is being closed. And a research facility in Sandwich in the UK will concentrate on pain.

"We have positioned them to tap into internal and external science (resources) on the West Coast, the East Coast, in Europe and at our Shanghai (China) research center," said Mikael Dolsten, president of research and development for vaccines and for biotech drugs.

- read the story [2] from Reuters
- check out the piece [3] from the Star-Ledger
- here's the story [4] from the San Diego Union-Tribune
- and here's the report [5] from the Philadelphia Inquirer

Related Articles:
Pfizer plans massive cuts in sweeping R&D reorg [1]
Total Pfizer jobs cut since 2005: 30,900 [6]
Pfizer R&D czars big on collaboration, quiet on cuts [7]
Pfizer/Wyeth merger could eliminate $3B, R&D jobs [8]