United Kingdom has cut drug-development research jobs over past decade.
Biopharmaceutical companies in the United Kingdom have cut research positions in drug discovery, according to a report released by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry on 17 October, entitled The Changing UK Drug Discovery Landscape. In the past decade, almost all large UK drugmakers slashed in-house research jobs in discovery, the earliest stage of drug development, when researchers usually test hundreds of thousands of compounds to find one that could move into the next stage. Overall, there has been a net loss of several hundred positions. At the same time, however, large companies have increased their investment in drug discovery through outsourcing and collaborations. A number of UK contract research organizations (CROs) reported growth in partnerships with academic drug-discovery centres. Some CROs reported more drug-discovery employees, and about one-quarter of those reported staff increases of more than 25%. Yet some of the rise in CRO research jobs is also due to an increase in the number of contracts made with companies outside the United Kingdom, particularly in North America and the European Union, the report says. The UK biopharmaceutical industry employs more than 70,000 people.
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Big pharma: UK drugs outsourced. Nature 539, 129 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nj7627-129b
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nj7627-129b