BioWorld Today Columnist

As we head toward the year-end holidays and the annual race to get those last deals done before midnight Dec. 31, here are just a few tidbits to go with your cocoa and cookies.

The Merckification Of Genentech?

Working Mother and Science Magazine both put Genentech in the ranks of top employers this year, but some of its own employees may have a different view this holiday season.

In mid-November, the vice president of the corporate information technology group laid off 45 CIT employees to "reduce operating expenses and make our services more cost effective." Thirty-four of those former staff ran the company's fantastic library, and were in the training and graphics group.

Some of the library staff had been with Genentech since the 1980s. The entire group was notified of its fate and escorted off the premises the same day, according to fellow employees. Seems like pretty tough treatment for librarians.

One Genentecher said, "This is part of the Merckification of Genentech - except Merck probably still has a library! The thinking seems to be that everyone gets their information electronically, so who needs librarians?"

The event generated another infamous fake Genentech memo, one of the underground methods used to vent employee angst. The memo, purporting to be from David Eagersman, "chief frugal officer" (the nom de plume of David Ebersman, CFO?), noted that library services were discontinued because only 5 percent of the company (largely in research and process development) used them, while the remaining 95 percent of the staff use Google and Wikipedia to get the info needed for making critical business decisions (and buying gifts for the coming holidays).

The fake Eagersman states, "the dissolution of the library and all its staff was strictly a business decision and in no way was influenced by the dedication of the library staff or the needs of its customers." He goes on to note that employee literature requests and searches will be dealt with "as soon as we find a reliable firm to outsource it to."

The Genentech Foundation was a major source of funding for the Biotechnology Library at San Mateo's beautiful new downtown library. Maybe they can outsource the work there.

Putting Resources To Good Use?

Biopharma companies are continually whining that they need more resources to support the discovery and development of new drugs. Your ace reporter just may have found an untapped source of headcount!

A recent story on Amgen noted that the company is using its staff of more than 100 in-house and external lobbyists to fight a new Medicare rule limiting payment for anemia drugs. Amgen counts heavily on its income from Epogen and Aranesp and is most unhappy that federal officials want to put a cap on their use. So far, the lobbying efforts have generated congressional activity.

Kidney dialysis companies are fighting the same battle by playing up the fact that those patients typically needing the higher (and threatened) doses of red cell growth factors are African Americans, who make up about 40 percent of the total dialysis population. The kidney care firms have approached the Congressional Black Caucus and other groups to push the idea that this is a racial issue.

What if Amgen were to put that headcount, cash and all the D.C. dinners and congressional junkets to California to work in R&D finding the next effective drugs? Just a thought.

Just How Biotech Savvy Is Carl Icahn?

Carl Icahn's latest great idea is that Biogen Idec is the solution to the empty pipelines in big pharma, and thus worth big bucks as a takeover candidate. His analysis has many in the bio world scratching their heads. A majority of Biogen's revenue comes from Avonex, one of the oldest biotech drugs. Biogen does have a long list of compounds in clinical development, but almost all of them came from collaborators or acquisitions rather than internal discovery.

Now, nothing's wrong with that. It shows a savvy management team that can identify great opportunities that will benefit from development within Biogen's infrastructure.

But it does suggest that buying Biogen Idec to solve the "new molecule" pipeline might be an inefficient, costly way to go. And a quick look at the results of Icahn's other biotech bullying - Imclone and MedImmune's sale to AstraZeneca - suggests that he might not be the best source of good ideas.

A New Twist To Hiring Top Execs

A researcher at Arizona State University is in the process of running brain scans on 500 folks identified as leaders. His goal? To pinpoint the brain activity that correlates with leadership, and use neurofeedback (a form of biofeedback) to "train" the brains of lesser luminaries to mimic the leaders.

Pierre Balthazard has tested local visionary leaders and 50 ASU graduate students. He has identified significant variation in levels of brain activity, with "visionaries" showing higher activity in regions associated with visual processing and information organization.

There are some obvious leaps of faith here, starting with the concept that he correctly identified "visionary leaders" in the first place. There is no evidence that "training" someone to generate brain activity patterns mimicking a "leadership" pattern will make that person take on the positive attributes of a leader. And it's hard to believe there is only one pattern that matches up with great leadership.

But, hey, this could become a great tool for human resource departments everywhere! Get your executive team to trot down for electroencephalograms and see if you can spot those deserving a promotion! Avoid all those costly management training seminars - just hook them up and train those brains!

Have a great holiday season, and don't forget to train for the upcoming Chase H&Q conference marathon.

Robbins-Roth, PhD, founding partner of BioVenture Consultants, can be reached at biogodess@earthlink.net. Her opinions do not necessarily reflect those of BioWorld Today.