It turns out that As­traZeneca has been us­ing its prun­ing shears on staff in Cam­bridge, MA as well as down in Gaithers­burg, MD, where we re­port­ed last week that the com­pa­ny has been culling the ranks at Med­Im­mune as part of a com­pa­ny-wide ef­fort to shift more re­sources in­to on­col­o­gy.

In this case, it’s the neu­ro­science team that is feel­ing the ef­fects of the com­pa­ny’s ef­forts to “ap­pro­pri­ate­ly size” its glob­al R&D force.

The well-con­nect­ed blog­ger Derek Lowe, who has made a part-time job re­cent­ly out of spot­light­ing new rounds of re­search cuts at Mer­ck and As­traZeneca, was the first to spot the cuts af­ter pick­ing up fresh buzz about more lay­offs.

As­traZeneca seems to be clos­ing their neu­ro­science site in Cam­bridge (MA): https://t.co/1p9LR­cgE6y

— Derek Lowe (@Derek­lowe) Ju­ly 20, 2016

A spokesper­son for As­traZeneca tells me that they’re ex­it­ing an of­fice in Kendall Square – which is main­ly oc­cu­pied by the neu­ro­science team for iMed – and re­lo­cat­ing any of the staffers who will be stay­ing on at their op­er­a­tion in Waltham.

“I don’t have the num­ber, un­for­tu­nate­ly,” he added.

All of this is hap­pen­ing as a re­sult of the com­pa­ny’s plans, as they orig­i­nal­ly cit­ed in April, for the fol­low­ing ob­jec­tive:

“Sharp­en­ing of our fo­cus on our main ther­a­py ar­eas to pri­or­i­tize our pipeline and im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty across the or­ga­ni­za­tion. This will see the com­pa­ny al­lo­cate ad­di­tion­al in­vest­ment to core ar­eas, par­tic­u­lar­ly on­col­o­gy.”

So don’t be sur­prised to hear about more such ef­fi­cien­cies at var­i­ous As­traZeneca op­er­a­tions.

Long­time As­traZeneca watch­ers will re­call that the phar­ma gi­ant cut way back on the neu­ro­sciences group four years ago, af­ter then R&D di­rec­tor Mar­tin Mack­ay was scram­bling to re­struc­ture the di­vi­sion and lay off more than 2,000 staffers in a last-ditch ef­fort to sat­is­fy an an­gry mob of an­a­lysts. Mack­ay was gone soon af­ter, (he now runs re­search at Alex­ion) but he left be­hind a 50-per­son “vir­tu­al” group in the Neu­ro­science In­no­v­a­tive Med­i­cines unit (iMed) charged with form­ing new aca­d­e­m­ic and in­dus­try al­liances in a ghost of its for­mer ef­fort on tough dis­eases of the brain.

The FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence has been a bright spot within the agency in terms of speeding new treatments to patients. That flexibility was on full display this morning as FDA released new draft guidance spelling out exactly how oncology drug developers can fulfill both the accelerated and full approval’s requirements with just a single randomized controlled trial.

While Congress recently passed legislation that will allow FDA to require confirmatory trials to be recruiting and ongoing prior to granting an accelerated approval, the agency is now making clear that the initial trial used to win the AA, if designed appropriately, can also serve as the trial for converting the accelerated approval into a full approval.

US regulators cleared an ultra-rare drug from Pharming Group, by way of Novartis, on Friday afternoon.

The Dutch biotech said the FDA greenlit leniolisib for an immunodeficiency disease known as activated phosphoinositide 3-kinase delta (PI3Kδ) syndrome, or APDS. People 12 years and older can receive the oral drug, to be marketed as Joenja, beginning early next month, Pharming said, five days ahead of the decision deadline set by the FDA as part of a priority review.