A Bay­er part­ner slims down, trim­ming R&D and en­act­ing lay­offs, to bet­ter fo­cus on the pair's prostate can­cer work

A Bay­er part­ner that co-de­vel­oped an FDA-ap­proved prostate can­cer drug is join­ing some of its biotech com­pa­tri­ots and tak­ing out its re­struc­tur­ing kit, an­nounc­ing a swath of R&D changes and warn­ing of po­ten­tial lay­offs Thurs­day morn­ing.

The Finnish biotech Ori­on re­vealed whole­sale changes to its pipeline fo­cus, say­ing it will halt its re­search in­to neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases like Parkin­son’s and Alzheimer’s. Such re­search is ex­pect­ed to be phased out by this fall as Ori­on re-cen­ters its ap­proach around ther­a­pies for can­cer and pain man­age­ment.

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