Novartis closes technical R&D site in San Diego as part of ongoing restructure

Novartis closes technical R&D site in San Diego as part of ongoing restructure

An R&D center in San Diego is the latest area to be impacted by Novartis’ ongoing global development restructure, the company has confirmed.

The Swiss Big Pharma will conduct a “phased exit” from the Technical Research and Development (TRD) site at Campus Point Drive, with “final closure anticipated by end of 2025,” the company confirmed in an email to Fierce Biotech.

Around 100 employees have been informed that they will be affected, the company said. A California WARN notice dated July 5 lists 29 employees as being affected. The closure of the site was first reported by The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Despite the closure of the TRD site, Novartis will continue to employ around 580 people in research activities around San Diego, working on areas such as oncology, neuroscience and immunology. TRD capabilities will be “consolidated at existing U.S. locations,” the pharma said.

Back in September 2023, Novartis rearranged its operations into five units, including development. The group oversees the creation of promising new medicines and helps chart the path toward regulatory approval for those drugs.

In April, Novartis revealed more detailed plans to shake up its global development group over the next two to three years. The plans called for a “parallel build-up and reduction of roles in certain locations,” a company spokesperson told Fierce at the time, with around 240 roles in the U.S. likely to be affected.

Today, Novartis confirmed that the closure of the TRD site is part of these plans to “evolve its global development organization, with the intent to drive sustainable, leading R&D performance and bring meaningful medicines to patients even faster.”

“To achieve this, a set of changes to build future capabilities and access global talent pools will be implemented over the next two to three years, with parallel build-up and reduction of roles in certain locations,” the spokesperson added, echoing a statement they gave earlier in the year.

Novartis employed more than 12,500 staffers across its development arm as of April. The changes outlined at that time were expected to account for a 1% to 2% global staff reduction across the development group.

These development layoffs are separate from Novartis’ broader restructuring campaign, which the company divulged in April 2022. At the time, Novartis said it would cut thousands of jobs worldwide as part of a revamp to improve efficiency and slim down the company’s overall structure.

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