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		</div><p><a href="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/call-over-drugs-research-centre.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full" title="The closure of a state-of-the-art centre where Viagra was invented will 'significantly compromise the UK's status as a centre of excellence'" src="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/min-call-over-drugs-research-centre.jpg" alt="The closure of a state-of-the-art centre where Viagra was invented will 'significantly compromise the UK's status as a centre of excellence'"/></a></p>
<p>The closure of a state-of-the-art centre where Viagra was invented will significantly compromise the UK&#8217;s status as a centre of excellence for pharmaceutical research, said one of the inventors of the drug.</p>
<p>Pfizer, the world&#8217;s biggest drugs company, announced last week it is to close its centre in Sandwich, Kent, within two years in a move that will see most of the site&#8217;s 2,400 staff lose their jobs.</p>
<p>The move by Pfizer has fanned fears that the UK is losing its position as a centre of excellence in drugs research and follows the announcement of job cuts at drugs giants GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca in recent years.</p>
<p>Simon Campbell, previously a senior executive at Pfizer and a key member of the team that developed the sex drug Viagra, slammed the decision and said the plant must not be allowed to lie idle.</p>
<p>He said: &#8220;It is difficult to understand the closure of Sandwich, which was the most productive research site in the world.</p>
<p>&#8220;The position of the UK as a centre of excellence for pharmaceutical research has been significantly compromised.</p>
<p>&#8220;Capital investment of more than one billion US dollars (£621.2 million) has been made at Sandwich and such state-of-the-art facilities cannot simply lie idle.&#8221;</p>
<p>The Sandwich site is the European hub of Pfizer&#8217;s global research and development division, but has already been hit with redundancies in recent years and Pfizer closed its manufacturing operations at the site in 2007.</p>
<p>As well as developing erectile dysfunction treatment Viagra, for which the group received the Queen&#8217;s Award for Enterprise, the Sandwich site also developed Celsentri, the first oral class of HIV treatment in more than a decade, life-saving anti-fungal treatments Diflucan and Vfend and heart disease drugs Istin and Cardura.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, it has emerged that Pfizer chief executive Ian Read, a Briton who was promoted to chief executive of the American firm in December, could receive a bonus of up to 2.6 million US dollars (£1.6 million) on top of his 1.7 million US dollar (£1.1 million) salary.</p>
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