Synbiotics Corp. of San Diego said Wednesday it will lay off orreassign 30 employees in its animal health products business,which a spokesman said could become profitable by mid-year.

The work force, which naw stands at 128, will be cut in a movethat aims to better define Synbiotics' three businesses, whichalso include bioprocessing and rational drug design.

"We're splitting into three businesses," said Norman White,Synbiotics' vice president of finance.

In 1989, the company formed ImmunoPharmaceutics Inc. as awholly owned subsidiary for its rational drug design business.A mammalian cell culture unit, UniSyn Fibertec Corp., last Juneacquired the Biotech Project from a Dow Chemical Co.subsidiary.

Existing veterinary products will not be affected by thecutback, White said. "We're just not going to undertake asmany new things as we might otherwise have done."

Synbiotics markets more than a dozen animal diagnostics andvaccines. Four products -- two diagnostics, a multivalent felineleukemia virus vaccine and an antibody treatment tocomplement chemotherapy against canine lymphoma -- arepending review by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Edward T. Maggio, Synbiotics' president, predicted a year agothat the group would be profitable by mid-1990. "We have notmade it," White said on Wednesday. "We're striving for the firstquarter (ending June 30)." -- Carol Ezzell

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