Friday, January 7, 2011

Merck Converting Kenilworth To Research Center: Price Tag $120 Million; 580 Laid Off


As if on cue, Merck has announced a change that one of my other commenters inquired after, this very morning -- per NJ.com:

. . . .Merck to Spend $120M to Convert Schering-Plough Corporation (SGP) N.J. Headquarters into Biologics Research Center; Will Cause 580 Layoffs

NJ.com -- Merck plans to spend $120 million over the next two years to transform Schering-Plough’s former world headquarters in Kenilworth into a research center heavily focused on discovering and developing biologics — potent medicines made of proteins and human antibodies. . . .

Wild -- and sad for the 580.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The way it was explained to us(1 of the 580 being let go) They are closing every building on site, except one research building that they are dumping the $120 million into, and selling off the rest of the space. The size of the site will be about 1/4 what it is now. Fred's old office building will be gone by 2013 a few other building are already vacant. That nj.com story makes this seem like a good thing.

condor said...

This will run as a new post shortly . . .

Thanks for the insight!

Namaste

Anonymous said...

what building would they keep? k15?

Anonymous said...

Condor, please have a look at our comment thread over at Pharmalot. This story that you ran here goes exactly to my point over there. Pharma is dumping small molecule programs everywhere and continuing to expand biologic efforts. I've heard stats that by 2020 ~75% of new drugs will be biologics. Most people blindly assume that this is a good thing. Read my post over at pharmalot and I explain why it is actually a rather bad thing for everyone. This is directly related to the extension of data exclusivity.
Nathan