The biomedical industry cannot afford

Since four years ago, Pfizer announced layoffs for its R&D department, the biopharmaceutical industry has set off a storm of layoffs, and the R&D department, which is the most expensive department for every company, is always the first to suffer. However, four years have passed and this trend continues. Many R&D personnel in the biomedical industry are also constantly worried about whether their work can last long. Looking back at the hot topics in the biomedical industry in recent years, the pharmaceutical industry layoffs are consistently ranked among the top five.

The layoff storm began four years ago when Pfizer’s layoffs were decided. Roche then announced the streamlining of its research and development organization in Nutley, New Jersey, while biotech giants such as Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline took similar steps. However, four years later, has the biopharmaceutical industry reached a stable state of its internal regulation? Unfortunately, the answer is no.

In the past few months, major biopharmaceutical companies have had new actions for layoffs. GlaxoSmithKline has announced that it will reduce its R&D facilities in North Carolina. Novartis is more thorough and directly sells its cancer research and development department. Just yesterday, Merck News reported that the company had conducted a new layoffs program and cut 120 research jobs in the Boston area. (Related reading: There are 120 layoffs at Merck, and the pharmaceutical giants have started a layoff frenzy?) These all indicate that the future adjustment of the biomedical industry will continue.

We cannot help asking why such violent turmoil has occurred. Is it not a period of rapid development in the field of biomedicine in recent years?

Analysis of the industry, there are two reasons.

First, as a technology-intensive industry, the biopharmaceutical industry is very vulnerable to hotspot research. For example, in recent years, the field of immunotherapy for tumors has been extremely hot. This trend has led almost all biomedical giants to increase their human and material resources in this area. These have led to an unprecedented expansion of the team of researchers working in the oncology department in just a few years.

However, not all companies will make progress in this area. When many companies' R&D projects are affected by Waterloo, they are invariably chosen to cut this sector in order to reduce losses.

As we all know, the failure rate of biomedical research is quite high, and the phenomenon of massive layoffs within the industry is well explained.

Second, in recent years, the competition in the biopharmaceutical industry has become increasingly fierce. On the one hand, this trend is conducive to the collection of high-quality research resources. On the other hand, since the resources of the acquirer and the acquiree cannot be completely complementary, there must be Overlapped parts. As a result, it can be imagined that the R&D department of the acquired party will inevitably appear to have been laid off.

Although this trend is a necessary path for the development of the biopharmaceutical industry, we cannot help asking whether this process is really necessary. Is there no other better solution? It is important to know that the core of the biopharmaceutical industry is technology. Once R&D personnel are constantly facing the pressure of being laid off, how can they ensure that they can use their talents in their own research projects?