The pan­dem­ic has led to “last­ing changes” in the way Am­gen does busi­ness, CEO Robert Brad­way said while open­ing the com­pa­ny’s year-end sales call on Tues­day. And as a re­sult of those changes, sev­er­al hun­dred US jobs are on the chop­ping block.

The cuts are ex­pect­ed to be­gin on April 2, and will pri­mar­i­ly af­fect the US sales force, Am­gen con­firmed via email. The moves po­si­tion the com­pa­ny to make ad­di­tion­al in­vest­ments in prod­uct launch­es and R&D, a spokesper­son said.

“We made these changes to bet­ter en­able Am­gen to make ad­di­tion­al in­vest­ments we be­lieve are need­ed to take ad­van­tage of pa­tient-fo­cused op­por­tu­ni­ties, in­clud­ing launch­ing new prod­ucts, and in­vest­ing in R&D,” a state­ment read. “These de­ci­sions are nev­er easy, and we are com­mit­ted to help­ing those im­pact­ed with tran­si­tion­al sup­port.”

SVB Leerink’s Ge­of­frey Porges brought the top­ic of com­mer­cial re­duc­tions dur­ing the Q&A por­tion of Tues­day’s call, ask­ing how they would play out in a “post-Covid world.”

“Wouldn’t you ex­pect to have to ramp back up once we elim­i­nate so­cial dis­tanc­ing?” he asked.

Mur­do Gor­don, EVP of glob­al com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions, said “a cou­ple of fac­tors” went in­to the re­or­ga­ni­za­tion, in­clud­ing the piv­ot to prod­uct launch­es and a shift to dig­i­tal that he be­lieves will per­sist be­yond the pan­dem­ic.

“What we’re do­ing is look­ing at our over­all com­mer­cial mod­el, and… mak­ing it more pro­duc­tive and mak­ing it more ef­fi­cient,” Gor­don replied.

“It’s that per­sis­ten­cy that we’re bet­ting on. What we haven’t done is com­pro­mised the abil­i­ty to have com­pet­i­tive share of voice in our field fac­ing in­ter­ac­tions both on the med­ical side (and) on the com­mer­cial side in front of the cus­tomer,” he added lat­er.

De­spite the US cut­backs, the com­pa­ny is plac­ing “large in­vest­ments” in the field force in Japan, Chi­na and Rus­sia, Gor­don said.

For the full year, Am­gen re­port­ed a rev­enue in­crease of 9% to $25.4 bil­lion —though not­ed that the growth was par­tial­ly off­set by low­er net sell­ing prices and the pan­dem­ic. An­a­lysts ze­roed in on Am­gen’s “break­through” KRAS G12C drug so­tora­sib, which got at­ten­tion last week when the biotech un­veiled a round of da­ta from a piv­otal study in non-small cell lung can­cer. They al­so took note of Am­gen’s asth­ma drug teze­pelum­ab, which is ex­pect­ed to go be­fore reg­u­la­tors in the first half of this year.

“We are big be­liev­ers in both of these ther­a­pies as so­tora­sib should have a rapid launch giv­en the un­met need and 6-12 months lead to mar­ket over Mi­rati’s ada­gra­sib,” Cowen’s Yaron Wer­ber and Bren­dan Smith said in a note to in­vestors.

“Am­gen’s ear­ly stage pipeline, how­ev­er, con­tin­ues to be slug­gish. In par­tic­u­lar, the BiTE pro­gram needs val­i­da­tion amid on­go­ing set­backs – now in­clud­ing the en­roll­ment pause for AMG 701 (BC­MA for RRMM), stop­ping Ph1 for AMG 596 (EGFR vI­II for glioblas­toma), on­go­ing chal­lenges to the CD33 pro­grams for AML, and slow progress with MCL 1.”

Porges wrote that he be­lieves ex­pec­ta­tions for so­tora­sib and teze­pelum­ab are “large­ly priced in, and there are on­ly so many ques­tions an­a­lysts can ask about com­bi­na­tion strate­gies and sec­ondary tu­mor tri­al time­lines.”

A California judge will allow a plaintiff in a state court case to introduce expert testimony connecting a potential carcinogen in former blockbuster medicine Zantac to cancer.

The order was handed down on Thursday from state judge Evelio Grillo, who is now allowing both parties to introduce expert testimony in an upcoming trial after what’s known as a Sargon hearing, where a judge determines the admissibility of expert witnesses and expert opinions.

Abbott is renewing its concussion awareness campaign, weeks after the company received FDA clearance for its lab-based traumatic brain injury (TBI) blood test.

The unbranded campaign features three generations of the Melon family — animated talking melons who slip on toys or take a spill while playing pickleball.

“Don’t mess with your melon. If you hit it, get it checked,” a narrator says.