Pfizer to reduce R&D at Wyeth’s Collegeville site

Pfizer Inc., which bought rival Wyeth last month, said today that it will move "a number of functions" from Wyeth's Collegeville, Montgomery County, location as Pfizer consolidates research and development at five "hub" sites.

The company did not immediately say how many jobs would be eliminated at Collegeville - Wyeth's long-term pharmaceutical headquarters - where Wyeth had employed 3,600.

The decision could affect a few hundred jobs, said one employee, who did not want to be identified.

Mikael Dolsten, president of BioTherapeutics Research & Development for Pfizer, emphasized that the Collegeville facility would remain open. The Pfizer campus there will be the headquarters for the company's specialty business unit, as previously announced.

Specialty business includes the top-selling Prevnar pneumococcal vaccine, and the company's rheumatoid arthritis, hemophilia, and other products for patients and physicians with needs different from those in the broader population. Specialists prescribe many of the drugs in this unit.

"We have been very pleased with the quality of work at Collegeville," Dolsten said, "and it is going to have a key role."

Pfizer earlier said it would close Wyeth operations in Great Valley next year, though the fate of 900 jobs there had not been determined.

Pfizer closed the $68 billion deal on Wyeth on Oct. 16.

Pfizer said it will significantly reduce R&D activities at Collegeville; Pearl River, N.Y.; and St. Louis, and would eliminate R&D operations in Princeton; Chazy, Rouses Point and Plattsburgh, N.Y.; Sanford and Research Triangle Park, N.C.; and Gosport, Slough/Taplow, in the United Kingdom.

Pfizer said earlier that it planned to cut 19,000 of 130,000 total jobs after it made the acquisition.    - Reid Kanaley and Miriam Hill