Ten years ago: Reserve Money Market breaking the buck

Ten years ago, I barely understood money market funds, and then on September 16, 2008 (via Wikipedia):

The Reserve Primary Fund was a large money market mutual fund. 

On September 16, 2008, during the Global financial crisis of September–October, 2008, it lowered its share price below $1 ("breaking the buck") because of exposure to Lehman Brothers debt securities. This resulted in demands from investors to return their funds as the financial crisis mounted.  Normally, the net asset value of money market funds is kept at $1. 

Reserve Management had multiple other funds frozen because of this failure. It has liquidated a few funds, and post periodic updates about plans to liquidate other funds on its website.

I had been looking for work for quite some time during my postdoc - I think I knew that the economy was in trouble by that point. I have clear memories of discussing the Reserve Fund failure with my interviewer, who was kind enough to pick me up in his car.

Glad things are somewhat better now than back then. 

Playing the Long Game, by QHV

I'm pleased to host an essay by a long-time reader and friend of the blog about their job search: 

After an arduous, demoralizing, post-Great Recession period of unemployment, underemployment, and job hunting, I wanted to share some happy, hopeful news: I recently landed a new job that I am excited about. It’s more than just a new job, really...this is a return to R&D and a major boost in career trajectory, quality of life, and overall work satisfaction, not to mention pay, all bundled into the culmination of a very difficult decade.  

The way this happened was unexpected and surprising to me. I have, until now, assumed that if you didn’t follow a particular prescribed path (find a job posting, apply for the job, get a phone interview, get a site interview, receive an offer) to getting hired, then you were either gaming the system or cheating. That must have been incredibly naïve of me. I veered from that sequence during my home stretch, achieving my desired outcome, but getting what I ultimately wanted didn’t feel like manipulation or cheating at all; it was hard work and it made sense to me. You are welcome to tell me if you disagree. It won’t subdue my elation.   

I am a former synthetic chemist. In the mid-2000s, I was truly thrilled to be doing medicinal chemistry. I enjoyed bench work, the companionship of fellow chemists, and the fact that I was doing what I wanted to do and had been educated to do…but in 2008 my position (like many folks’) vanished, and I ended up briefly unemployed before taking a string of less-than-interesting positions. These jobs were only tangentially related to my love of chemistry and they paid much less. I hesitate to use the term drudgery, but…let’s put it this way: perpetually looking forward to the end of the day and the end of the work week can be a pretty miserable way to live a life.   

Stories from after the Great Recession

Linda Wang's article about chemists 10 years after the Great Recession is out in today's issue of C&EN. Don't miss the really great stories (including a couple of friends of the blog). I really enjoyed this story from an anonymous chemist-turned-nurse: 

A woman who graduated with an M.S. in chemistry from a western university around the time of the recession recalls the difficulty of finding work as a new graduate. The woman, who did not want to be identified by name so that her job prospects would not be affected, was unemployed for two-and-a-half years, she says, and heartbroken at being unable to find work in a field she was passionate about. 

But she had to pay the bills, including student loans, so she worked at a hotel chain before deciding to return to school for a nursing degree. Now that the woman has graduated and obtained her nursing license in two states, she has the luxury of choosing among four job offers. 

Some chemists question whether they should encourage young people to go into the sciences when their journeys have been so difficult. “It’s kind of hard to encourage kids I know who want to go into science, which is terrible because it’s a great field, and we need scientists,” [CJ's note: former Pfizer chemist Pamela] Case says. “But when they ask for my experience, I have to be honest.” Many chemists like Case were forced to leave the bench.

If I were laid off and could not find a job in my field, I would imagine it would be hard-pressed to recommend it to others. That's got to be a tough thing to mention during a career day session.

(Readers, what do you do during career day sessions? I regret to admit my audiences get more exposure to the Survey of Earned Doctorates than they would ever want...) 

A few bits of bad news...

Amgen, Genentech cutting some staff (via Endpoints News's Brittany Meiling)

Two biotech giants — Amgen and Genentech — are laying off a combined 330 people at California facilities, both citing “organizational changes” as the primary reason for the cuts. 

Amgen is shaking up its R&D department, eliminating 200 positions at its Thousand Oaks, CA and South San Francisco facilities by the end of this year, STAT reported Saturday. An Amgen spokesperson tells me the company is making organizational changes across the globe in regards to its R&D departments. This round of layoffs, however, mostly impacts facilities in California.... 

...For Genentech, the layoffs are concentrated at its Vacaville, CA manufacturing facility, where about 1,000 people are employed. Genentech (owned by Roche) is cutting 130 positions....

Also, in the news in Indianapolis (via WBOI's Annie Ropeik):

At Indianapolis-based pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, 2,300 employees will take buyouts as part of the company’s effort to save money by cutting at least 2,000 jobs in the U.S. by the end of the year. 

It’s unclear whether layoffs are still in the works in the Hoosier state. 

Lilly said in September it would aim to save $500 million by cutting 3,500 jobs out of its more than 41,000 worldwide, with at least 2,000 cut in the U.S....

 Best wishes to those affected. 

C&EN seeking sources: ten years after the Great Recession

From the inbox:

C&EN is seeking sources for an upcoming feature 

Were you laid off during the Great Recession in 2007 and 2008? Or, was your career impacted in some other significant way (lost grant funding, lost employees, shuttered your business, etc.)? If so, C&EN would like to find out how you’ve been doing since then for a feature story on the 10th anniversary of the economic recession. We’re looking for chemists from industry, academia, government, and self-employment. Please e-mail Linda Wang at l_wang@acs.org if you’re willing to share your story.   

This is an important topic - I am glad to see C&EN covering it. 

Bucks County medicinal chemistry

Also in this week's C&EN, an interesting article by Rick Mullin on the Pennsylvania Biotechnology Center of Bucks County, a joint public/private hub for small biotechs. I thought this was very interesting:

Flores, who is now head of discovery for hepatitis B at Janssen, says that as a largely virtual company, Novira could have set up anywhere. But, like Sofia, he saw obvious advantages to coming to BCBC—which he had not heard of, despite working 20 minutes away at Merck’s West Point, Pa., facility—given its community of hepatitis B research.... 

...In fact, Novira has moved at lightning speed, taking its lead drug candidate from discovery through Phase I clinical trials in less than three years and producing results that got Janssen’s attention. Flores says the company did this using a minimal number of on-site researchers and relying heavily on contract research organizations in China and Germany. It has also been able to attract top talent. “Almost everyone I hired at Novira is from Merck or Roche.” 

But a talented workforce is only one component in establishing a successful biotech company, Flores adds. Also necessary are local sources of venture capital and a pool of experienced executives. Novira received initial seed funding from BioAdvance, a Philadelphia-based venture firm. And there are experienced managers in the region. But there is nowhere near the concentration of venture funding sources and scientists with start-up experience that can be found around places like Boston....

This article is, I feel, instructive of potentially the best case scenario after major pharmaceutical research sites close. There was already space available and it was close enough to a major center of finance (Philadelphia) - and still, only 325 people (200 scientists) are employed there. Yikes.

(I wonder what would happen if you were to compare Doylestown to all the other non-coastal places that have suffered major site closures/layoffs: Ann Arbor, St. Louis, etc.) 

2013 not shaping up to be a great year for pharma: Challenger reports 19,507 jobs lost

The big news first: Challenger, Gray and Christmas (which is a company that does outplacement services for large firms, and tracks layoffs as a result) reported that there have been 19,507 jobs lost in the US pharmaceutical sector for 2013, with pharma announcing 10,585 cuts in October. That's a big number, and as you can see below, that easily beats 2012 (14,150.)

The inspiration for this chart, of course, is Matt Herper's vital and still-relevant analysis that he put together in April of 2011. John Carroll (FierceBiotech) followed it up in October 2012, and I'm just adding the relevant numbers so that the chart is up to date. (See here for the spreadsheet that the above chart is based on, I'm putting the links to the relevant Challenger press releases below.)

Since 2000 until the end of October 2013, according to Challenger's numbers, there have been 349,502 jobs lost in the US pharmaceutical industry. As Matt smartly pointed out in 2011:

"not all those people remained unemployed, and the total headcount of the pharmaceutical industry did not drop that much. Many of those who were laid off were probably hired back by other drug makers. Some folks have probably been laid off more than once. It’s also worth noting that big mergers are one reason for the cuts."

This is a vital industry, and one that I'm proud to be a part of. While I think there are definitely glimmers of hope here and there, times are still very hard. Best wishes to all of us.

Press releases: Total 2011 Challenger numbers, total 2012 numbers, October 2013 numbers.

Derek Lowe: good news for pharma chemists?

I didn't want to forget Derek Lowe's post earlier this week about Big Pharma beginning to hire medicinal chemists. In the comments, a fair bit of RUMINT:

Anon3: "Pfizer in the process of hiring 14-18 med chemists" 

Dawning Realisation: "Rumor has it that this is serious and could be 50+ (yes that's fifty, not a typo) med chemists. All those students who have given up hope of ever finding their way into a big pharma outfit might want to start to reconsider.
I hope the skeptics see this for what it is - some genuine good news to put some scientific muscle back into drug discovery." 

Scientist: "Looks like there will be 40 medchem jobs in USA, 20 in NC and 20 in PA and 20 in UK."

One suspects that there's something behind these rumors, but it will take sustained hiring (250+ chemistry positions (all degrees) a year, industry-wide, for 3 years?) before I believe the market for organic chemists is back. 

I think I need to start tracking this more systematically than I have been. 

Derek Lowe, on a career in pharma

From a very interesting interview in Trends in Pharmaceutical Sciences, Derek Lowe speaks:

TIPS: What advice would you offer someone interested in pursuing a career in the pharma industry today? 

I’m tempted to say ‘Run for your life!’ But that's not quite accurate, or not yet. What I would emphasize, though, is that it's a terrible time to be an undistinguished scientist doing drug discovery, at least in a high-wage country. The grunt work is easier to hire out to people who will do it for less money, so my advice to people is to try to give them something that they can’t buy so easily in Shanghai or Bangalore. And even as these places get more expensive, and the acute phase of outsourcing passes, the point remains that you should always have a good answer to the question ‘Why do we pay you?’ You should try, as much as possible, to be able to do some things that no one else around in the company can do, which will usually mean keeping up with new research ideas as they emerge. Or thinking up your own, of course. 

Other advice: you’ll probably find yourself starting with, or working at, smaller companies than you might have imagined. I think that there's a shift in the population of drug researchers, with proportionally fewer of them at the large organizations and more in the smaller ones. So you’d better be prepared to move from job to job as well, because the smaller companies are probably going to be a bumpier ride. A corollary to that is to strongly consider moving to an area that has a good startup culture, so that there's a better chance of finding somewhere else to go when and if the time comes.

Well, that's all over good news.

In the clouds, a silver lining

Luke Timmerman at Xconomy has a nice writeup responding to that silly PriceWaterhouseCooper report (and covering Derek Lowe's response to it as well). He covers a couple of recently unemployed scientists, including Steve Richards, a Ph.D. medicinal chemist:

After reading this report, I felt compelled to follow up with a regular Xconomy reader who I’d characterize as smart, experienced, hardworking, positive, and—last time I checked—jobless. His name is Steve Richards, and he’s a medicinal chemist by training. Back in 2010, he got more than 18 months’ notice that his job at South San Francisco-based Exelixis (NASDAQ: EXEL) was going away, and had done all the right things in terms of networking and job hunting since. He still hadn’t found a full-time gig when we last spoke in September, although he had lined up a temp job at UCSF to help keep his skills sharp. 

Steve Richards
Credit: Xconomy

When I called Richards on Friday, I was pleasantly surprised to hear some good news. He latched on with a new startup, South San Francisco-based Global Blood Therapeutics. He’s doing medicinal chemistry for drug discovery, work that’s right up his alley. “I’m working on small molecules, treatments for genetic blood disorders,” Richards says. “It’s exciting biology. It’s great to be back.” 

I was heartened to hear that a Yale-trained medicinal chemist with a decade of experience can still find a job in pharmaceuticals even though it took a herculean effort. But not surprisingly, I found that Richards was similarly baffled by the sentiments expressed in the recent PwC report. 

“As somebody who has been among the workers displaced from the industry because we were told we were unnecessary, to now hear people say ‘We can’t find enough people for this new R&D environment,’ it’s unsettling,” Richards says. “While many people will acknowledge there are a lot of people who have been disengaged from the industry, there aren’t a lot of mechanisms to re-engage these people.” 

It's really nice to hear a happy story these days, especially with all the unfortunate news. I should also note that he introduces Marie Beltran, a biochemist still looking for a position. Go over there and check it out! 

A sad picture.

Credit: Diablonet.com

Thanks to the latest report from The Day's Lee Howard about Pfizer's quiet layoffs from its Groton site (now, less than expected!) and Derek Lowe's report about it, I heard tell of stories of a funny/sad juxtaposition from the old from the old Upjohn site, I believe. I found it on a random website. The blue banner says: "The science of being a good neighbor" and the red one says "We love where we live."

From Kazoo Chemist, at In the Pipeline: "The one in the picture is Building 209. That housed most of the medicinal chemists on the 6th and 7th floors." Sigh. 

C&EN: Patent cliffs in pharma generate job losses

From this week's C&EN, Rick Mullin talks about some of the continuing job losses in pharma and the patent cliff:

The patent losses and sales declines have been accompanied by job cuts. AstraZeneca moved early in the year when it disclosed that 7,300 positions will be eliminated, including more than 2,000 in R&D. 

Notably, the company made big cuts in neuroscience research. But it also made a strategic change. AstraZeneca increasingly employs scientists who work primarily on data generated by academic and other research partners that perform experiments designed in collaboration with the drug company. The move highlights an increasing emphasis on research partnerships and on mathematical modeling and statistical analysis in the drug industry. 

Other firms cut staff in reorganizations in 2012. Merck Serono cut 500 jobs in April in the process of closing its headquarters in Switzerland and moving operations to its parent company in Germany. And in a move that heavily impacted New Jersey’s “pharmaceutical alley,” Roche announced it will close its operations in Nutley, N.J., which had served as the company’s U.S. headquarters for decades. About 1,000 jobs will be eliminated. 

Novartis said it will shed nearly 2,000 jobs in the U.S. in the face of losing patent exclusivity for Diovan, a blood pressure medicine that had sales of $6 billion in 2010. Meanwhile, Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines arm of Sanofi, launched a manufacturing-oriented restructuring program expected to eliminate as many as 2,000 jobs across France. Sanofi itself announced a revamp of its research operations in France that will eliminate 900 jobs by 2015.

 I wonder what 2013 will bring? Good things, I hope, but I am not feeling it.

C&EN: Canadian government helping out Montreal R&D

It's hard not to see these two C&EN articles as somewhat
emblematic of the changes In These Times.* 

From this week's C&EN, an article by Lisa Jarvis talking about the Canadian government's effort to help out the struggling Montreal R&D scene:

As drug companies move their R&D operations out of Quebec in rapid succession, Canadian authorities are trying to sustain the region’s life sciences community. In the latest effort, the government, along with AstraZeneca and Pfizer, is committing $100 million over five years to establish the NeoMed Institute, a nonprofit research center in Montreal. 

NeoMed aspires to bridge the gap between basic research and early clinical studies for drug candidates by offering universities and biotech start-ups funding and services. The hope is to eventually restore some of the hundreds of R&D jobs the region has lost in the past two years. AstraZeneca and Pfizer, along with any other big pharma partners that join NeoMed, will have an option to license molecules developed there. 

AstraZeneca is kicking in its former neuroscience research facility, which was focused on developing small molecules, along with $5 million and intellectual property for three potential pain drugs. The firm values its input at $35 million...

...The research center will provide minimal relief for the victims of pharma-related R&D job losses in the Montreal region. In addition to AstraZeneca, Merck & Co., Johnson & Johnson, and Boehringer Ingelheim all have shuttered R&D sites or significantly cut the number of scientists they employ in Quebec.

Someone (myself?) should track where all these chemists that used to work in the Montreal region have ended up; this is really unfortunate, and does not bode well for pharma R&D in Canada.

Best wishes to all of us.

*Not intending offense to Nigerians or Indians, just noting the choices that multinational pharma R&D is making. 

The 3rd quarter of 2012 was not so great for chemical, pharma firms

From this week's C&EN, I see storm clouds brewing. From Melody Bomgardner, 3rd quarter earnings for chemical companies were not looking so great:

Against the backdrop of a slowly strengthening U.S. economy, chemical firms saw earnings slide again in the third quarter, in large part because of rapidly declining prices. Out of 21 firms tracked by C&EN, Dow Chemical, DuPont, and eight other companies reported lower sales and earnings in the quarter compared with last year. 

The results prompted promises by chief executive officers to heighten the cost-cutting moves they have been implementing throughout the postrecession recovery. As they announced financial results, Dow CEO Andrew N. Liveris and DuPont CEO Ellen J. Kullman unveiled additional restructuring plans, including layoffs, to be implemented in the fourth quarter and beyond (C&EN, Oct. 29, page 7). Then, one week after Dow’s Oct. 23 announcement, the company amended its tally of layoffs, saying it will cut 3,000 positions in the next two years, an increase of 600 from the original statement and equal to 6.3% of the firm’s workforce.

From Ann Thayer, same thing goes for the pharma companies:

For the third consecutive quarter, no relief came as combined sales and earnings declined at the major pharma companies tracked by C&EN. Overall, quarterly sales fell 5.0%, and earnings for the companies that reported them dropped 9.1%. For the first nine months of the year, sales were down 3.0%, while earnings declined 5.4%. By comparison, in the first half of 2012, sales slipped just 2.1% and earnings were down 3.5%. 

Four companies reported double-digit drops in sales, and five had similar-sized slides in earnings. Hardest hit was Bristol-Myers Squibb. Its third-quarter sales plummeted 30.1% to $3.7 billion, and earnings dropped by an even larger 34.3% to $685 million. U.S. patents expired in March on its high blood pressure drug Avapro and in May on the blood thinner Plavix. Excluding these two products, the company’s sales were up 7% compared with the third quarter of 2011.

Does anyone foresee another round of layoffs from Big Pharma? By now, I can't see how they could cut more (he said naively.)

Human stories abound in C&EN's employment outlook issue

Credit: C&EN

From Linda Wang's excellent, yet excruciating story on unemployment among pharma chemists, some terribly sad stories:

“I’m listed as employed,” says “Eric,” 46, who was laid off in 2007 from his position as a senior chemist at Johnson & Johnson and is now an adjunct professor at three different colleges and universities. “I got reemployed, but is this what employment should be like for someone at my level?” [snip] 

...He teaches as an adjunct professor on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, splitting his time among three colleges and universities that are 50 to 70 miles apart. He leaves around 10 AM and doesn’t get home until after 11 PM, leaving little time to spend with his twin daughters, who are nine years old. 

Because of the length of his commute and the high cost of gas, Eric sold his car and bought a used Suzuki with better gas mileage. “The previous car was costing me about $1,000 a month in gas, and that was not sustainable,” he says. He has roughly $400 left in his 401(k). “Four hundred bucks is no 401(k); it won’t buy you a plane ticket anywhere,” he says. But he’s not one to dwell on his difficulties. “It’s tight financially, but the fact is we’re still surviving. It’s just a little harder, that’s all.”

I found this comment on ACS' Salary Survey data kind of amusing:

“The data that ACS has is for the most part self-reported, and that’s always going to underreport the truth,” says Lee H. Latimer, a consultant and longtime ACS volunteer, who was laid off from Elan in 2011. “Many may have a job, which keeps them from collecting unemployment, but they’re not working either in their field or in a position that comes anywhere close to matching their previous income”—meaning, he says, that they’re effectively underemployed.

And how about the PMP, that certificate of awesomeness from a couple of years ago?:

“Michael,” a Ph.D. organic chemist in his 50s, living in California, knows just how unsettling this roller-coaster ride can be. Since he was laid off from a biotech company in 2008, he has applied for more than 10,000 jobs, some 7,000 related to the chemical sciences and 3,000 outside of science. 

Meanwhile, Michael has earned certifications in clinical trial design and management, regulatory affairs, quality assurance and control, and project management. But “by the time that I finished, not only did the number of these jobs decrease, employers weren’t going to take anybody who doesn’t have experience. The training is not enough for them,” he says. “I went and retrained myself, but I still cannot get a job. 

I don't think it's a coincidence that most of the people in these articles are in what is supposed to be the prime of their careers (late 30s to 50s). That it has become brutal for mid-career chemists (the people who are probably going to be most productive and have the most ability to innovate) is fundamentally clear. It is beginning to be clear that not a single organization (not ACS, not the pharma companies, no one in government) has any idea what to do about it. What a shame.

C&EN's 2012 employment issue: the numbers

I don't want to have the new numbers released from the ACS Department of Member Research and Insights from the March 2012 ACS Salary Survey to be lost in the shuffle, so here they are, pulled out of Sophie L. Rovner's article, which is worth reading in full:

• Overall member unemployment: 4.2% 
• Ph.D. member unemployment: 3.4%
• B.S. member unemployment: 5.9%
• Industrial member unemployment: 5.4%
• Academic member unemployment: 2.2%
• % of members unemployed at anytime during 2011: 8.2%
• % of members unemployed at anytime during 2010: 8.4%
• % of newly graduates unemployed in October 2011: 13.3% 
• % of newly graduates unemployed in 2010: 10.6% 
• % of Ph.D. graduates unemployed in October 2011: 8.8%
• % of B.S. graduates unemployed in October 2011: 13.6%

Also, check out this chart from the article (right), which indicates the brutal reality facing new graduates in chemistry.

Credit: C&EN*

Anyone who buys into facile claims that America needs more scientists and more chemists needs to be able to explain this graph. 

Also, the larger picture for the chemical manufacturing sector:

Zeroing in on the U.S. chemical manufacturing sector, employment totaled 799,600 on a seasonally adjusted basis in September 2012, up 0.2% from the prior month and up 0.7% from September 2011, according to preliminary figures from BLS. That’s good news, but it’s little comfort to the hundreds of thousands of people who lost their jobs in prior months. At the start of the Great Recession in December 2007, employment in the sector was 857,600. Five years earlier, it was 921,500. And 10 years before that—in December 1992—chemical manufacturing employees numbered 1.03 million.

Yikes.

*[NOTE: Corrected number for 2004 for ACS members. Numbers include unemployed and seeking employment. Data for 2012 on new graduates are not yet available. SOURCES: ACS Starting Salary Survey, ACS Comprehensive Salary and Employment Status Survey.]

Second quarter earnings fall for both chemical and pharmaceutical industries

From this week's C&EN, the first paragraphs of the 2nd quarter of 2012 results for the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. First up, Melody Bomgardner's article on the chemical industry's earnings:

U.S. chemical firms are running out of dependable strategies for maintaining earnings in a global economy that shows few signs of growth. In the second quarter, the 23 firms tracked by C&EN reported an average decline in earnings of 6.1% compared with the year-ago quarter. And in the first quarter, earnings fell by 8.4%.  

Also in the second quarter—and for the first time since the Great Recession ended in 2009—more than half of the surveyed companies reported a decrease in top-line revenues. On average, the companies saw sales retreat by 1.1%. Chemical executives blame the drop on lower sales volumes because of customer destocking, depressed prices, and currency exchange losses due to a relatively strong dollar.

Next, Lisa Jarvis' article on pharma industry earnings:

Second-quarter sales plummeted at many big pharmaceutical companies as the full impact of patent expirations on top-selling products kicked in. Companies hit the hardest by generics competition are trying everything from acquisitions to geographic diversification to shore up their businesses. 

For a second consecutive quarter, overall sales and earnings for the big pharma­ceutical companies tracked by C&EN declined. For the 10 companies reporting second-quarter results, sales were down 4.5% compared with the same period in 2011. Earnings fell 2.6%. 

Well, let's hope this is a temporary thing.

Tough times for biotech

In this week's C&EN, an article noting 6 companies having difficulties by Ann Thayer:

...A new board at Canada’s QLT hopes to fix a “precarious financial position.” In 2011, the firm lost $30 million, despite revenues of $42 million. To align spending and headcount, the board has cut 146 jobs.  

...Another Canadian firm, Cardiome Pharma, is cutting 85% of its workforce after Merck & Co. stopped work on an oral form of Cardiome’s heart drug vernakalant. The cutbacks will eliminate internal research. 

...Chelsea Therapeutics is facing a delay in the approval of its hypotension drug Northera. The North Carolina company will keep only as many of its 49 employees as it needs to complete the regulatory process. 

...To cut costs, Savient Pharmaceuticals will reduce its workforce by 35%, or about 60 employees.  

...In light of market pressures, Switzerland’s Actelion is cutting 135 positions, or about 5% of its workforce, and emphasizing R&D in specialty areas. 

...Meanwhile, Biolex Therapeutics has shut down entirely. 

“It is a challenging financing environment, and within that the fates of individual companies and technologies move in all sorts of directions,” says Glen Giovannetti, global life sciences leader at Ernst & Young. “Long term, I think we are in a period of contraction.”

Yikes.

How are your peers doing?

A reader asked a terribly interesting question -- what has the career track of your graduate school peer group been? They give the following information ("people who started chemistry program (Top 50) between the years of 2004-2006 and have received a PhD/MS (48 people)"). Here's how it looks, tabulated (note that these are the numbers for an entire department):

Here's the table for my academic group. (Small-to-midsize academic group, top 50 department, graduated between 2000-2008 with MS/PhD, used percentages for anonymity.)

I think it's the last set of number that's the most stunning. Readers, what does it look like for your academic peers?

C&EN: Former Wyeth site leased by Dow

From this week's C&EN, an interesting story on the former Wyeth site at Collegeville, PA that was closed by Pfizer by Alex Tullo:

Dow Chemical has agreed to lease a College­ville, Pa., R&D facility owned, and once operated, by Pfizer. Some 800 researchers will begin the move from Dow’s current site in Spring House, Pa., in the first quarter of 2013. The labs are about 17 miles apart in Montgomery County. Pfizer ended research operations at Collegeville in 2010 as part of an R&D consolidation after its 2009 purchase of Wyeth. That year, the company laid off 450 workers in Collegeville, although the firm’s specialty care unit is still based there. 

Dow, meanwhile, acquired the Spring House facility in 2009 when it purchased Rohm and Haas, which had opened the labs in 1963. Since the acquisition, the facility has started to support Dow businesses such as performance plastics and Dow AgroSciences. Dow says the 750,000-sq-ft College­ville facility offers a substantial increase in lab and pilot-plant space that can better accommodate future growth in research operations. “Dow did a comprehensive feasibility study and found it would be cost-prohibitive to upgrade the Spring House facility rather than customize Collegeville,” a Dow spokeswoman tells C&EN.

Is this a harbinger of a shift away from the glamour days of pharma back to chemical manufacturing? One wonders if new PhDs would rather not work in pharma, these days.