In the final quarter of 2014, the number of advertised biotech and pharma sector jobs fell slightly in two of the three job databases tracked by Nature Biotechnology (Tables 1 and 2). Compared with the third quarter (Nat. Biotechnol. 32, 1167, 2014), biotech listings on Monster and Naturejobs shrank whereas listings on LinkedIn increased slightly.

Table 1 Who's hiring? Advertised openings at the 25 largest biotech companies
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Table 2 Advertised job openings at the ten largest pharma companies
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In the fourth quarter, Novo Nordisk announced plans to establish a new obesity research unit tasked with identifying new approaches and targets for obesity treatments. The unit will be located with the company's type 1 diabetes research unit in Seattle and will initially employ about 10 people, with plans to expand to 60 by the end of 2016.

Following Baxter International's March 2014 announcement to split its medical products and biopharmaceuticals businesses into two public companies, the company began work on a 200,000-square foot global innovation and R&D center in Cambridge, Massachusetts for Baxalta, its new biopharma company. Baxter will relocate approximately 400 R&D employees as well as business development, cancer and biosimilars teams to the new center from California and Europe.

Johnson & Johnson said it will open its fourth J-Labs incubator, a 30,000-square-foot facility capable of housing up to 50 life sciences startups, at Texas Medical Center in Houston. Scheduled to open in the fourth quarter of this year, the new incubator joins existing J-Labs in San Diego, San Francisco and Boston. Additionally, Johnson & Johnson has launched its Asia-Pacific Innovation Center in Shanghai, with satellite offices in Singapore, Australia and Japan. The center will use academic partnerships to identify early-stage innovations in the areas of pharmaceuticals, consumer healthcare products, and medical devices and diagnostics, and accelerate their development through deals.

Finally, startup Yumanity Therapeutics plans to discover therapeutic targets for protein misfolding diseases, including Alzheimer's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Yumanity plans to have 20 to 25 employees in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by the end of 2015.

Selected downsizings within the life-sciences industry are shown in Table 3.

Table 3 Selected biotech and pharma downsizings
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