Amgen cutbacks don’t let up





 

 

Thousand Oaks-based biotech giant Amgen has announced another round of layoffs. This time, however, they won’t affect its local headquarters.

The reorganization will result in about 300 jobs lost from its Onyx Pharmaceuticals facilities in San Francisco.

Amgen purchased Onyx Pharmaceuticals, which produces cancer drugs, for $9.7 billion in October 2013.

In a companywide March 9 memo, Amgen chair/CEO Bob Bradway said Amgen will consolidate its commercial and development oncology work in Thousand Oaks and some research and development roles will move to Amgen’s existing research facility in South San Francisco.

“We anticipate reducing our Onyx workforce by approximately 300 home office and remote worker positions,” Bradway said.

About 250 marketing, medical and field workers from Onyx will be retained, Amgen spokesperson Cuyler Mayer said.

“Where they will be employed hasn’t been determined yet,” he said.

Amgen has not said how many, if any, employees will be moved to its local headquarters, which has cut thousands of jobs over the past 10 years.

Thousand Oaks economic development manager Haider Alawami said Amgen has not indicated to the city if there will be employee movement here nor did it share information about the reorganization.

“Many times when there’s an acquisition, there’s a reorganization, but it was a surprise to us they were closing the (Onyx) offices there,” Alawami said.

Mayer said the reorganization aims to move funds to where they’re most needed, particularly drugs the company is preparing to launch. “Drug launches require a lot of resources,” he said. “The restructuring was really a way to shift resources for the launches.”

In his memo, Bradway indicated a new focus will be to build on Amgen’s presence in the oncology field, combining the company’s scale and immuneoncology expertise with Onyx’s approach to hematologic malignancies, or tumors that affect the blood and blood marrow.

“The combined oncology capabilities will create the focus and efficiency Amgen requires to progress our vision in oncology and to remain a world leader for the long run,” he said.

Mayer said a March 6 ruling by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration allowing the industry’s first biosimilar drug, a competitor’s knockoff version of Amgen’s chemotherapy recovery drug, Neupogen, had no bearing in the reorganization. In 2013, Neupogen brought in $5.8 billion of the firm’s $18.1 billion in Amgen product sales, according to a report in the Pacific Coast Business Times. Last year, it brought in $1.2 billion.

According to the FDA, a biosimilar product is a biological product that is approved based on a showing that it is highly similar to an FDA-approved biological product, known as a reference product, and has no clinically meaningful differences in terms of safety and effectiveness from the reference product. Only minor differences in clinically inactive components are allowable in biosimilar products.

The FDA ruling promises greater competition and lower prices in the multibillion-dollar biologic drug market as more biosimilars, or copycat drugs, are developed.

The ruling is not bad news for Amgen, Mayer said.

“We’ve been anticipating this for quite a long time,” he said. “We’re also innovating in the biosimilar area as well, so it’s actually quite the contrary.”


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