Bristol-Myers Squibb just became the latest company to completely exit neuroscience drug discovery -- along with hepatitis C and diabetes. One percent of its R&D work force, or between 70 to 75 people, will lose their jobs as a result.
The company will still conduct studies on all its late-stage drugs in those areas, and on those already on the market. It's making a big push into cancer drugs that work by turning up the immune system, like its Yervoy for melanoma and its experimental PD-1 blocker. It will keep focusing on HIV, hepatitis B, heart failure, immunoscience and fibrotic diseases, too.
Neuroscience is increasingly being abandoned by big pharmaceutical companies, instead becoming the focus of specialty shops like Biogen Idec. Psychiatry drugs have been especially hard hit.
