Pharma giant Wyeth announced plans yesterday to eliminate research in half of its disease research areas. The company has not yet said what, if any, jobs will be cut in the process.

A handful of other pharmaceutical companies have recently narrowed their research focus in response to sluggish sales and the growing cost of drug development.

Wyeth in particular has suffered from the loss of revenue from its blockbuster ulcer medication, pantoprazole (Protonix), which became available in generic form last year.

The company has not disclosed how many jobs will be cut, but its R&D program will be scaled back to 27 therapeutic areas from 55, with a focus on oncology, inflammation, and vaccines, among others.

The WSJ Health Blog reported that Wyeth will keep the overall number of scientific jobs, but that some scientists will be cut because their skills don't translate to other research areas. In addition, teams of researchers will be combined to tackle the broad disease areas. Reuters reported Wyeth spokesperson Michael Lampe saying: "This is not a cost-reduction effort at all; the dollars spent and number of personnel won't change."