More Pharmaceutical Firms Cut jobs

More cutbacks are under way at drug companies to address current business issues. KV Pharmaceutical, a developer and marketer of generic and branded drugs, is reducing its workforce by about 700 jobs as the company's new management cuts costs and resumes operations. In the past few months, the St. Louis-based company has voluntarily recalled most of its products and suspended all of its manufacturing after FDA inspections turned up "manufacturing and quality-assurance issues," KV says. Meanwhile, Israel's Teva Pharmaceuticals is planning to lay off 300 employees at its plant in Doral, Fla., and cut another 790 jobs at Pliva, a Zagreb, Croatia-based firm that Teva acquired from Barr Pharmaceuticals late last year. Teva acquired the Florida plant with its 2006 acquisition of Ivax. Oscient Pharmaceuticals, a marketer of two FDA-approved drugs, is laying off about one-third of its 305 employees across the U.S. and is considering putting itself up for sale. Meanwhile, Advanced Life Sciences, in Woodridge, Ill., has cut 30% of its workforce, or nine jobs, to conserve cash and focus resources on commercializing its first product, the antibiotic cethromycin.