Between 1,000 and 1,500 jobs are expected to be lost at Teva Pharmaceutical Industries as part of the company’s cost-cutting measures.

Reports from Israel claim the majority of the layoffs will be made in the US and Europe and mainly focused in Teva’s recently acquired Cephalon’s generic business.

The reports say that Teva is hoping to raise $500 million in synergies from its takeover with job losses expected to raise the majority of its target.

Teva has already said it is planning to cut sales, marketing and administrative expenses by $300 million, R&D by between $120 million and $150 million, and production costs by $50 million to $80 million. R&D savings would be achieved by cutting duplicate operations, the company said.

Teva has a history of job losses following takeovers of generic companies. In 2008 it bought US generic specialist Barr and reduced its workforce by 10%, reports say.

A reduction of 1,000 jobs at Cephalon would represent a loss of 27% roles before the takeover. But one company where job losses will be made, the reports say, is at Mepha, the Swiss generics manufacturer Cephalon bought last year. The company had 620 jobs prior to the acquisition.

A single ‘superjab’ offering lifetime immunisation against flu has been developed by scientists.

According to developers, SEEK, once-in-a-lifetime Flu-v fights could start to be used on patients in three to five years, against all strains of the virus, including the deadly avian, swine and seasonal variants.

Gregory Stoloff, SEEK, said: “Our aim is for the flu vaccine to become more like the mumps and measles vaccine – where you need it once and you get protection for a long time.”

The NHS spends £100 million on vaccinations every year, but the changing virus means that vaccines have to be updated, so the new jab could cut this cost down considerably.

But upon vaccination with Flu-v, the immune system is said to detect and fight a part of the virus that is present in all strains.

Results of clinical trials have found that healthy volunteers who were vaccinated with Flu-v had less of the virus in their blood.

Professor John Oxford, of trial constructors Retroscreen Virology, said: “It clearly has a biological effect worthy of further investigation, particularly with respect to the broadness of the response.”

Last winter, 600 people in Britain were killed by flu.

The DH has said that it is too early to comment on Flu-v.

Nephron Pharmaceuticals plans to build a $313 million plant in Cayce, South Carolina, creating 707 new pharmaceutical jobs.

The generic respiratory treatment specialist will build its new facility on a 60-acre site to help expand its market and develop a pipeline of products.

Nephron currently employs more than 400 people at its manufacturing and distribution facility in Orlando, Florida.

The state will contribute $4.5 million to the facility’s preparation and construction costs, which is set to be up and running within the next couple of years.

A quarter of the NHS drugs spending of £4.1 billion last year went on just ten medicines, according to a new report.

IMS Health found that total prescribing costs in England, including primary care and community prescriptions, reached a record £12.86 billion in 2010, an increase of 4.8% from the previous year.

This total in English hospitals has increased by 7.7%.

The report, commissioned by the NHS, says that this growth is likely to be related to the introduction of new, more expensive treatments.

The top 10 drugs (Figure 1) were mainly biologics used to treat either autoimmune diseases or cancers.

The most expensive were two arthritis drugs, Abbott’s Humira (adalimumab), with an increase of 19% to £180.5 million, and Pfizer and Amgen’s Enbrel (etanercept), costing £179.6 million.

Novartis’ Lucentis (ranibizumab) treatment for eye disease cost £128.9 million, overtaking Roche’s breast cancer medicine Herceptin.

The report noted the difficulty in biologics, as they are unlikely to be copied and manufactured into generics, consequently costing for the NHS more for branded medication. Manufacturers are likely to make more innovative forms of existing drugs, which would also push prices up.

However, the primary care drugs bill, which takes up 66% of the £12.9 billion spending of medicines in the English NHS, is expected to decrease by £1 billion over the next four years due to a series of patent expiry dates.

Global pharmaceutical contract sales revenues will reach $5.24bn in 2015, a new report predicts.

The World Pharma Contract Sales Organisation (CSO) Market 2011-2021 found that revenues will continue to grow over the next decade as pharma companies look to cut costs.

Richard Lang, pharmaceutical industry analyst, says pharmaceutical companies are turning to CSOs for “new approaches to sales, targeting doctors and healthcare payers”.

The report by Visiongain found that supplying sales teams was currently the largest source of revenue for outsourcing companies in 2010, accounting for 80% of the market.

Pharma companies based in the US, UK and Japan will continue reduce sales forces, the report predicts, in coming years, providing an opportunity for contract sales companies and sales teams.

An increased emphasis on speciality drugs will also require new procedures and expertise for CSO sales teams, the report says, with e-detailing, tele-detailing and medical science liaison having a greater prominence over the next ten years.

“Face-to-face detailing of healthcare professionals is still the most common pharmaceutical sales technique in many markets,” said Mr Lang. “However, with increasingly busy schedules, more and more doctors are implementing 'no-see' policies for sales reps.

“The drive to cut rising healthcare costs will increase the influence of payers in future prescribing decisions.”

The demand for contract sales services is also expected to continue to grow in emerging markets such as China and India, according to the report’s predictions, with companies seeking to enter or expand their sales field-force presence in these regions and rely increasingly on the local knowledge and expertise CSOs offer.

Joint-working between pharma companies and clinical commissioning groups (CCG) could lead to GPs becoming commercially biased, a new report has warned.

The Quality of GP Prescribing suggests that doctors may favour medicines from pharma companies that offer discounts or preferential deals instead of cheaper generic alternatives.

Despite Government plans to increase joint-working in an attempt to reduce costs, the report by The King’s Fund says the approach “may not be truly cost effective”.

The report highlighted a study from Liverpool University academics in 2003 that found that almost half (49%) of practitioners said the pharmaceutical industry was their main influence on which new medicines they prescribed.

This compared to 17% of GPs who preferred to use academic and professional literature as their main source of information to forge an opinion.

The report also calls for “urgent revision” on the system which causes branded generics to undercut generic prices in the Category M basket of medicines.

Category M was introduced into the Drug Tariff six years ago to adjust the reimbursement prices of more than 500 medicines.

But The King’s Fund report says the current system can encourage a switch back to more expensive brand prescribing which counters years of favouring cheaper generics, and is also confusing for patients.

Cardiac device corporation Boston Scientific will cut up to 1400 jobs in the US by the end of 2013, but its expansion in China will create 1000 new jobs.

The domestic job cuts are part of a programme to reduce the company’s annual costs by as much as $275 million.

The news came a day after Boston Scientific’s announcement that it plans to invest $150 million over the next five years to grow its business in China, where it hopes to create 1,000 jobs in manufacturing and clinician training.

Ray Elliott, CEO of Boston Scientific, commented that the US market for implantable defibrillators – a major source of revenue for the company – had been particularly weak in the last quarter, for reasons including concerns about possible over-use and cost pressures being exerted by hospitals.

Boston Scientific is also the leading supplier of drug-eluting stents (DES), the market for which has fallen both in the US and internationally since 2006 due to questions over safety.

The downturn in the domestic cardiac devices market has affected Boston Scientific’s US competitors also. Medtronic announced it was cutting 2000 jobs earlier this year, while Cordis is dropping out of the DES market altogether.

“The company anticipates the reduction of 1200 to 1400 positions worldwide,” said Boston Scientific spokesman Erik Kopp. “However, this will occur through a combination of factors, including employee attrition and targeted headcount reductions.”