Eisai reorganises R&D
pharmafile | December 2, 2013 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | Eisai, R&D, cfu, epcs, pcu, reorganisation
Tokyo-based Eisai is to axe 130 jobs in Europe and the US as part of an attempt to shake up R&D operations, slimming down its structure and increasing efficiency.
The key change is that responsibility for Eisai Product Creation Systems (EPCS) – which is the company’s R&D operation by any other name – has been decentralised, with the resulting creation of autonomous units with defined responsibilities in specialist areas of disease or technology.
Some operations at one of Eisai’s US facilities and at its UK ‘knowledge centre’ will also be wound up.
The manufacturer says the changes will allow it “to better prioritise and define its product creation activities”, driving forward high priority projects, while looking more closely at next-generation products and investigational compounds.
EPCS was previously centralised within a single core function unit (CFU) for clinical support functions worldwide – and these management responsibilities have now been devolved to local CFUs and product creation units (PCUs).
The five PCUs, which include oncology and neurology specialists, will now focus on processes ranging from candidate discovery through to regulatory approval.
The five CFUs will have full responsibility for pushing Eisai’s pre-clinical and clinical operations, taking in technology, regulatory affairs and other shared core functions as well as promoting new drug development with the PCUs.
Eisai’s Product Creation Headquarters will oversee product creation strategies and their promotion, plus corporate portfolio management. This new model should ‘streamline communications and decision-making’, Eisai says.
Meanwhile the chief clinical officer, a new post created earlier this year, will now have complete control of how key support operations such as statistical analysis and clinical pharmacology go about their business – this means a CFU that was specifically for scientific and operational clinical support is now defunct.
There will no more medicinal chemistry activity at Eisai’s EMEA Knowledge Centre (EKC) in Hertfordshire, UK – but Eisai says neuroscience drug discovery work there will increase.
This means there will be more work for Eisai’s open innovation function, which primarily conducts joint research with University College London (UCL).
In June the manufacturer announced an £8 million investment in its UK operations.
The second core part of the R&D restructure is to consolidate operations for small molecule process development in Japan (Kashima, Tsukuba) and India (Vizag) – and that same function at the Andover, US, site has been dissolved altogether.
However, Andover will continue to be Eisai’s discovery research hub in the US, the company insists.
There is more change in biopharmaceutical development, currently divided between Andover and Exton in the US: these processes will now be absorbed into the newly-established biopharmaceutical development department at Exton.
Adam Hill
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