Under the oddly code-named “Super Bowl,” German pharma company Bayer is said to be reviewing its R&D locations, with fears this may lead to the swinging of an ax across some operations.
This is according to a local news report from Wirtschaftswoche, which said a Bayer spokesperson confirmed that it was reviewing some of its research locations. Its original story reported that around 1,000 positions could be up for the chop, although Bayer would not be drawn on whether this would happen, adding it reviews operations across the business all the time.
The board will be debating what will happen in the coming weeks, the newspaper said. Around 8,000 people work in R&D for the German company, which also has a hand in chemicals and other nonpharma work. This comes in the same week that its takeover of U.S. seeds group Monsanto won U.S. approval.
Late last year, and in a major reorganization, Bayer combined its pharma R&D unit under one division and under one leader. The new unit brings together all R&D activities for therapeutic areas across the board within the company’s pharmaceuticals division, including cardiology, gynecology, ophthalmology, hematology and oncology research.
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This also came after Bayer spent big on R&D in 2017, paying $400 million (€340 million), and putting a potential $1 billion more on the table, to buy into Loxo Oncology’s tropomyosin receptor kinase inhibitor franchise, which is seeking FDA approval this November.
It also signed a new and potentially major research pact with Japan’s PeptiDream, using its tech to find macrocyclic/constrained peptides against a whole load of targets.