Astellas to shutter NY facilities, cut jobs

Astellas Pharma [1] is the latest drugmaker to plan a shutdown of U.S. facilities. The Japanese company will shutter operations in Ardsley and Melville, NY, both of which it acquired in the $4 billion buyout of OSI Pharmaceuticals [2], Dow Jones reports. Roughly 150 workers are employed at the sites, which will close by June 2011.

Astellas snapped up OSI (NASDAQ: OSIP [3]) in a hostile bid, aiming to gain the latter's blockbuster cancer drug Tarceva. OSI also had operations in Farmingdale, N.Y., and Cedar Knolls, N.J., and those facilities will remain open--at least for now. An Astellas spokeswoman tells the news service that long-term decisions about these two will be made when it's finished with integration planning.

Mergers have claimed a variety of pharma facilities in the U.S.--and abroad--as companies such as Pfizer (which bought Wyeth) and Merck (which bought Schering-Plough) try to wring costs out of their combined operations. 

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Related Articles:
Astellas buys OSI for $4B [6]
OSI Pharma to consolidate U.S. workers [7]