Uppsala, Sweden-based Orexo is focusing its development activities to the three proprietary programs OX219, OX51 and OX27, cutting 35 full-time employees in the process.

The personnel reduction, which will be completed during Q2 of 2012, is expected to lower the costs by a total of $4.4 million annually. Negotiations with trade union representatives will commence immediately.

"The focus of our business activities will now be fully in line with Orexo's strategy and we shall exclusively invest in further development and commercialization of our proprietary products,” said Anders Lundström, CEO, Orexo. “This means that we are directing all our resources towards our key later stage development programs.

The three programs, OX219, OX51 and OX27, are based on proprietary drug delivery technologies applied to well-known substances with licensed uses. This results in programs with significantly lower development risk, lower cost and shorter development time than traditional drug development programs. This approach was used to successfully develop Orexo's pain product Abstral and the insomnia product Edluar.

Today, Orexo has 110 employees, of which approximately 80 work in R&D.