Merck Files Notice Of 500 Montco Layoffs

Location of Upper Gwynedd Township in Montgomery County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The drugmaker Merck & Co. will lay off 500 people from its facility in West Point, Montgomery County, between Dec. 23 and Jan. 5.

Merck said on Oct. 1 that it would eliminate 8,500 jobs from its worldwide workforce beyond the 7,500 it had not yet cut from an earlier restructuring plan, but company officials were not specific about where and when.

Several big pharmaceutical companies with operations in the area are cutting jobs. Message boards devoted to Merck have been full of discussions about which units would lose people, but official public notice of the 500 job cuts at the West Point facility came because of a federal law called the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN).

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20131102_Merck_files_notice_of_500_Montco_layoffs.html#S8XhpVChWKLAmKe5.99

Teva To Cut 5,000 Jobs As Drug Company Winds Down Bucks Operations

Map of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, United States with township and municipal boundaries (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries will cut about 5,000 jobs, 10 percent of its workforce, accelerating a cost-cutting plan as it prepares for lower-priced competition for its best-selling drug.

Teva, the world’s largest maker of generic drugs, said it expects to save about $2 billion a year by the end of 2017.

In May, the company announced plans to close its West Rockhill Township manufacturing plant in 2017, eliminating more than 450 jobs there and dealing a significant blow to northern Bucks County‘s employment base.

Teva is the Pennridge-area’s second-largest employer after Grand View Hospital.

Read more: http://www.mcall.com/news/breaking/mc-teva-fires-5000-workers-20131010,0,7070943.story#ixzz2hKpgdvPX
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Pressure Grows To Create Drugs For ‘Superbugs’

Government officials, drug companies and medical experts, faced with outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant “superbugs,” are pushing to speed up the approval of new antibiotics, a move that is raising safety concerns among some critics.

The need for new antibiotics is so urgent, supporters of an overhaul say, that lengthy studies involving hundreds or thousands of patients should be waived in favor of directly testing such drugs in very sick patients.  Influential lawmakers have said they are prepared to support legislation that allows for faster testing.

The Health and Human Services Department last month announced an agreement under which it will pay $40 million to a major drug maker, GlaxoSmithKline, to help it develop medications to combat antibiotic resistance and biological agents that terrorists might use.  Under the plan, the federal government could give the drug company as much as $200 million over the next five years.

“We are facing a huge crisis worldwide not having an antibiotics pipeline,” said Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at the Food and Drug Administration.  “It is bad now, and the infectious disease docs are frantic.  But what is worse is the thought of where we will be five to 10 years from now.”

Read more:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/health/experts-debate-plan-to-speed-antibiotic-development.html?hp&_r=0