April 18, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
PARSIPPANY, N.J. – Daiichi Sankyo, Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of Japan-based Daiichi Sankyo, is setting up a new U.S. headquarters in Basking Ridge, N.J. to streamline its operations, commercial and development segments, the company announced this morning.
The company has several locations across New Jersey, including in Edison and Parsippany. Daiichi Sankyo said the move is part of an ongoing effort to enable innovations in its therapeutic areas, including cardiology, oncology, pain and other areas where there are unmet medical needs.
“Uniting our New Jersey-based personnel into a single location not only makes us more efficient, but it will also further strengthen collaboration among teams working across the entire life cycle of our medicines,” Glenn Gormley, chairman and president of Daiichi Sankyo, Inc., said in a statement. “We have enjoyed being a part of the Parsippany and Edison communities and we look forward to what the future holds in our new headquarters.”
Daiichi said it anticipates moving employees to its new facility in 2017. The company did not provide information on the size of the facility or whether or not it is a new construction or if the company was taking over an existing facility.
In a move to bolster its oncology division, Daiichi Sankyo recently tapped former AstraZeneca executive Antoine Yver to head the company’s oncology R&D efforts. Yver will lead the company’s research and development across the oncology therapeutic area including external investments, internal pipeline decisions, and resourcing requirements, Daiichi Sankyo said earlier this month.
The consolidation effort comes only a few months after the company announced plans to issue pink slips to approximately 1,000 U.S. positions as it reorganizes its U.S. commercial operations from maturing primary care product portfolio to a specialty portfolio focusing on areas such as cardiovascular, pain management and oncology. The eliminated positions will come from the company’s U.S. commercial home office, located in Parsippany, N.J., as well as field-based sales and other positions throughout the country. U.S. research and development positions will not be impacted, the company said. The company said the elimination of the positions will reduce expenses, but did not specify by how much. In its statement, Daiichi Sankyo said some of the eliminated positions will include current open jobs and the other eliminations would include those voluntarily made by current employees, as well as involuntary ones.
The layoffs and the reorganization comes as the company prepares to lose exclusivity on its best-selling medication, Benicar, which will lose its patent protection in 2016. Benicar is used in the treatment of hypertension, brings in about 27 percent of annual revenue for Daiichi Sankyo. Last year the medication brought in $2.6 billion. Benicar is prescribed to keep blood vessels from narrowing, which lowers blood pressure and improves blood flow. In addition to the loss of patent protection, a new blood thinner developed by Daiichi Sankyo that hit the U.S. earlier this year includes a regulatory warning, which analysts speculate may limit its market potential. SAVAYSA, also known as edoxaban, is an oral, once-daily selective factor Xa-inhibitor. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the medication in January, however the federal government said the medication will have to include a “boxed warning” that cautions against it being used for patients with normal renal function.
