Mer­ck trig­gers a new round of lay­offs in R&D re­or­ga­ni­za­tion, push­ing more jobs in­to Cam­bridge, San Fran­cis­co

Mer­ck is con­firm­ing that it’s trig­gered a new round of lay­offs in its R&D group as it con­cen­trates and ex­pands its drug re­search work in two ma­jor biotech hubs, Cam­bridge, MA and San Fran­cis­co. The re­struc­tur­ing in­cludes adding a new lab in Cam­bridge, which will fo­cus on the fast-grow­ing mi­cro­bio­me field.

A spokesper­son for Mer­ck tells me:

“With­in Mer­ck Re­search Lab­o­ra­to­ries, we are mak­ing some or­ga­ni­za­tion­al changes with­in our dis­cov­ery, pre-clin­i­cal and ear­ly de­vel­op­ment area to en­able ear­li­er ac­cess to emerg­ing ex­ter­nal sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy to aug­ment our lead­ing dis­cov­ery and de­vel­op­ment ca­pa­bil­i­ties. These changes in­clude in­creas­ing our in­vest­ment in ex­plorato­ry bi­ol­o­gy in ar­eas where bio­med­ical re­search is con­verg­ing, specif­i­cal­ly in Cam­bridge, Mass. and the San Fran­cis­co Bay area, Calif.  Un­for­tu­nate­ly, these changes will re­sult in work­force re­duc­tions at our Ke­nil­worth and Rah­way, N.J. sites and our North Wales, Pa. screen­ing fa­cil­i­ty as we shift re­sources and per­son­nel.

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