Things are spiraling out of control, now the more folks are cut in R&D, the more we will suffer down the road - Merck executives forgot (or never know) how this game is played
Merck Cutting Drug Research Jobs at Three East-Coast Sites
Pharma giant plans new laboratories near Boston and San Francisco, increasing focus on microbiome research
Merck & Co. said it plans to lay off research-and-development workers at three East Coast sites in a shake-up of its early-stage drug-hunting efforts that also includes a new focus on the health effects of micro-organisms that populate the human body.
A Merck spokeswoman said the job cuts, and some employee transfers, would affect less than 10% of “discovery, preclinical and early development” employees in Kenilworth, N.J., Rahway, N.J., and North Wales, Pa. The company’s headquarters are in Kenilworth.
Other large drugmakers including Pfizer Inc. and GlaxoSmithKline PLC also have cut R&D spending or reorganized research units in recent years to become more productive relative to their spending.
The Merck spokeswoman said the company is making the changes to allow it to have “earlier access to emerging external science and technology to augment our leading discovery and development capabilities.”
At the same time, Merck plans to start new laboratories in Cambridge, Mass.—near Boston—and the San Francisco Bay Area, as part of a trend among large drug makers to try to tap into hot clusters of biotechnology start-up activity and academic research.
In Cambridge, Merck is creating a new “exploratory science” group that will focus on emerging research, including the role of the so-called microbiome in human health. The microbiome is the set of bacteria and other micro-organisms that reside in the human body. Emerging research suggests that finding ways to alter the microbiome can treat certain conditions, such as inflammatory bowel disease.
Merck’s head of infectious-disease discovery research, Daria Hazuda, will lead the Cambridge exploratory science site, the spokeswoman said. The new Cambridge labs are scheduled to open later this year.
Merck also plans to set up a research site in South San Francisco in early 2017 that initially will focus on cardiovascular, metabolic and cancer research.
The new changes are the latest at Merck since Roger Perlmutter took over as R&D chief in 2013 with a mandate to improve the once-storied division. That year, Merck embarked on a plan to reduce its total work force by about 20%, including cuts among R&D scientists, as the company narrowed its focus to certain treatment areas, such as cancer immunotherapy.
Dr. Perlmutter also boosted Merck’s scouting of external drug R&D projects that it could acquire or license.
Merck has reduced its annual R&D spending to $6.7 billion last year from $8.5 billion in 2011.
The pharmaceutical R&D blog “In the Pipeline” reported some of the Merck changes on Tuesday.