TorreyPines Therapeutics Inc. is ditching its drug discovery operations and cutting staff 50 percent, in the second round of cutbacks this year.

The San Diego-based company also will seek to sell its noncore programs and focus its operations on three compounds now in the clinic: tezampanel, NGX426 and NGX267. It also is seeking partners for all three compounds.

Its immediate development efforts will be directed at tezampanel in acute migraine headache. The company has an end-of-Phase II meeting with the FDA scheduled for Monday. Tezampanel, an AMPA/kainate receptor antagonist, met its primary endpoint of headache pain relief in a Phase IIb trial last year, the sixth study that showed its effectiveness in the treatment of chronic pain.

Other priorities it laid out include to complete an ongoing Phase I trial to evaluate the analgesic effect of NGX426, the oral version of tezampanel, in a capsaicin model of hyperalgesia, and to complete an ongoing Phase II trial of NGX267 in dry mouth, secondary to Sjogren's syndrome.

The discovery operations will be shut down in conjunction with the Sept. 30 conclusion of a Alzheimer's disease genetics collaboration with Eisai Co. Ltd.

The company also said it is seeking to monetize its gamma-secretase modulator and Alzheimer's disease genetics programs, as well as its compounds phenserine, Posiphen and bisnorcymserine.

The layoffs will leave the company with 13 employees. It previously laid off 10 workers in an effort to shave up to $4 million from its operating expenses. (See BioWorld Today, Feb. 15, 2008.) As of June 30, it reported $20.1 million in cash and cash equivalents. Shares of TorreyPines (NASDAQ:TPTX) closed at 47 cents, down 1 cent.

In another downsizing announced Thursday, Nycomed A/S, of Zurich, Switzerland, said it would eliminate more than 250 jobs by closing production facilities in Denmark and Finland, transferring those duties to other plants. Denmark will lose 190 jobs by the end of 2009 as plants in Grenaa and Helseholmen are closed, and the Roskilde plant will be reorganized.

In Finland, 66 workers will lose their jobs when the company discontinues manufacturing at its Ekenas location, with production being transferred to Germany and Poland.