The “reorganization” fairy strikes again, this time at Telik. Telik is handing 44% of its workforce (or about 42 employees) their walking papers.

Can you guess what department their from? Yeah, you’re right. They’re mainly from early stage R&D and “support” positions (like who? secretaries?). The employees are getting severance payments at least along with with job placement assistance.

Wow, that’s nice of them.

Telik said they would incur a 1Q09 charge of $900,000 for personnel-related restructuring. So, basically each scientist and/or admin is worth about $21,000.

The company will now focus on its iffy cancer drugs TELINTRA (for neutropenia), TLK58747 (a cytotoxic) and TLK60404 (a dual Aurora-VEGFR kinase inhibitor).

Here’s how CEO Michael Wick put it:

“This reorganization will allow us to focus our resources on the clinical development of our lead compound, TELINTRA, currently in Phase 2 Studies for Myleodysplastic Syndrome and Chemotherapy Induced Neutropenia, as well as other potential indications. We also plan to advance our two leading preclinical drug candidates and continue to support our TRAP technology collaborations. We are thankful for the significant contributions our employees have made.”

At least these 42 employees got a one sentence “thank you,” not like Advanced Life Sciences earlier today.

Not cool ADLS, not cool at all.

Image from VentureBeat

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