Novartis Cuts 150 Jobs, Shifts Focus of Shanghai Facility to Drug Development

 

Three years after Novartis opened a $1 billion research & development facility in Shanghai, the company is shifting the focus of the site from drug discovery to commercial development.

As a result of the pivot, about 150 early drug discovery research staff will lose their jobs. However, in the long run, Novartis plans to add more than 300 jobs to the facility. The shift in focus of the Shanghai facility was first reported by Fierce Biotech.

Novartis opened the Shanghai facility in 2016 with a focus on researching potential treatments for diseases that were more common in China, including lung, liver and gastric cancers. There are currently more than 1,000 employees stationed at the Shanghai site, known as CNIBR.

As Fierce Biotech first reported and then was confirmed by Reuters, Novartis has seen some success with the early drug research but now that has to shift into developing those products for commercial use in the Chinese markets. Jay Bradner, head of Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, touted the success of the company’s discovery efforts but noted that it has to mature into drug development.

“Our need to better resource early drug development globally, combined with important changes to the drug development and commercialization landscape in China, have converged on the decision to pivot from drug discovery in Shanghai to early drug development,” Bradner said, according to the report.

The CNIBR team will continue its mission to develop drugs for the Chinese market. The research teams at the facility will focus on programs both discovered by the discovery team there, as well as from other Novartis discovery sites across the globe. The team will now push to develop the drugs for approval by Chinese regulators. With the CNIBR’s focus being on the Chinese market, that site was selected to make this switch, due, in no small part, to the growing importance of that country as a market. Earlier this year, an IQVIA report projected China’s pharmaceutical market will grow to between $145 billion and $175 billion by 2022. The company is now the second-largest pharmaceutical market in the world behind the United States and that represents a significant part of Novartis’ growth strategies, Bradner told Fierce.

“The new direction for Novartis in China is driven by the maturation of the Chinese life sciences sector and regulatory system, the emerging impressive innovation potential of entrepreneurial biomedicine in China and our own need to rebalance drug development and discovery,” Bradner was quoted as saying. 

Bradner added that the Chinese government has committed to regulatory reform, which has improved access to life-saving medications in that country.

According to the report, CNIBR will be the only site to make this switch. The company’s other discovery facilities in Cambridge, Mass., California and Switzerland will continue their discovery efforts.