Pfizer planned reorganization will result in a "net reduction" of jobs

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer told the 1,300 full-time employees at its San Diego research unit yesterday that a planned reorganization will result in a "net reduction" of jobs at the sprawling campus.

A spokesman said the company will empty two of the nine buildings on the campus, and either sell or lease them.

New York-based Pfizer, the world's largest drug maker, plans to cut an undisclosed number of its 15,000 research and development jobs worldwide, and consolidate or reshuffle drug development projects among its six global research sites.

The job cuts are part of a larger reorganization effort at Pfizer, which employs 115,000 worldwide. Faced with increased competition, patent expirations and safety concerns about its top-selling pain reliever Celebrex, Pfizer disclosed in April that it would trim costs by $4 billion, which would include layoffs.

Yesterday, it was the R&D employees' turn to learn their fate. Staff at Pfizer's U.S. research sites - in Connecticut, two in Michigan and San Diego - were given some details in closed meetings. Pfizer also has research units in England and Japan.

"Every (R&D) site and every line are impacted by this, but the important things are that our program goals remain, and there are no site closures," said Betsy Raymond, a spokeswoman for Pfizer. "What we have in our drug pipeline continues. We want to free up spending where we can, so it can be applied to the new medicines we are working on."

Pfizer offered only sketchy information about plans for the Pfizer Global Research and Development campus on the Torrey Pines Mesa, a nine-building campus dedicated to research in four areas: cancer; diabetes and obesity; eye diseases; and virology, such as HIV/AIDS and SARS.

On the basic research side - the lab bench discovery of new drug molecules - the San Diego facility will continue to work in all four areas, said Raymond.

But on the development side - nurturing promising compounds through human clinical studies - the virology and diabetes/obesity programs will be shifted to other Pfizer campuses, she said.

Some of the San Diego campus' basic research services - like the screening of drug compounds - will be farmed out to Connecticut and England, said Raymond.

Pfizer's San Diego research campus has had striking successes and failures in its various drug programs. In oncology - a program that will remain here for both research and development - Pfizer's San Diego team worked on Sutent, an experimental drug for stomach cancer and kidney cancer.

Pfizer plans to file an application next month seeking U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for the drug.

In contrast, Pfizer stopped development this month on Capravirine, an experimental HIV drug first developed by San Diego biotech Agouron Pharmaceuticals. Pfizer inherited the compound in 2000 when it bought Warner-Lambert, which had purchased Agouron a year earlier.