No­var­tis’ sweep­ing re­struc­tur­ing will re­port­ed­ly lead to thou­sands of job cuts world­wide, in­clud­ing a “three-dig­it num­ber” in its home of Switzer­land.

Swiss news­pa­per Tages-Anzeiger first re­port­ed the plans, cit­ing un­named sources. In re­sponse to a query from End­points News, a No­var­tis spokesper­son said roles will “in­evitably” be im­pact­ed but de­clined to dis­cuss num­bers.

The new or­ga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture which we an­nounced last week is cen­tral to our growth strat­e­gy as it will make us more ag­ile and com­pet­i­tive, en­hance pa­tient and cus­tomer ori­en­ta­tion, un­lock sig­nif­i­cant po­ten­tial in our R&D pipeline and dri­ve val­ue cre­ation through op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cies. These ef­fi­cien­cies will come through lean­er struc­tures and will in­evitably lead to roles be­ing im­pact­ed.

How­ev­er, at this time it is too ear­ly to in­di­cate any spe­cif­ic num­bers. We ex­pect the new struc­ture to be ful­ly in place and op­er­a­tional by end of 2022.

The com­ments echo a pre­vi­ous state­ment from No­var­tis. Lay­offs were ex­pect­ed when CEO Vas Narasimhan an­nounced a plan to chop more than $1 bil­lion in costs by com­bin­ing the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and on­col­o­gy busi­ness­es, meld­ing three groups — cor­po­rate strat­e­gy, R&D port­fo­lio strat­e­gy and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment — in­to one and find­ing ways to con­sol­i­date things bet­ter.

The phar­ma gi­ant cur­rent­ly em­ploys about 108,000 peo­ple around the globe. Three key ex­ecs are al­ready head­ed out as part of the re­vamp: John Tsai, head of de­vel­op­ment and CMO; Su­sanne Schaf­fert, head of on­col­o­gy; and Robert Wel­tevre­den, who has run cus­tomer and tech­nol­o­gy so­lu­tions.

The mRNA player Moderna is further cementing its presence on the African continent.

Moderna announced on Thursday that it has finalized an agreement with Kenya’s government to partner up and bring an mRNA manufacturing facility to the east African nation. The new facility aims to manufacture up to 500 million doses of vaccines annually. Moderna also said the new facility will have the ability to spike its production capabilities to respond to public health emergencies on the continent or globally.

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.

ViiV Healthcare has teamed up with the UN-backed Medicines Patent Pool and three generic manufacturers to expand access to medicine that can prevent HIV.

ViiV and the Medicines Patent Pool jointly announced Thursday that the MPP signed sub-licensing agreements with Aurobindo, Cipla and Viatris to manufacture generics of a long-acting form of cabotegravir for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). As a result of the agreement, the manufacturers will be able to develop, manufacture and supply generic versions of cabotegravir LA in 90 countries — subject to regulatory approvals.