Merck moves Seattle to Boston

When I heard that pharmaceutical company Merck was linkurl:slashing;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55103/ more than 7,000 jobs across the company, my thoughts immediately went to Eric Schadt and his colleagues at Rosetta Inpharmatics, a Seattle-based Merck subsidiary. I linkurl:profiled;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/54801/ Schadt, who heads the company's research genetics department, in our July issue. Recent linkurl:reports;http://www.genome-technology.com/issues/blog/general/150221-1.html seemed to indicate that Merck was essentially dissolving its Seattle research operations, which include Rosetta and other labs involved in the company's genomics efforts. Apparently, I wasn't the only one with that mistaken impression. "Eric [Schadt] sent me a quick note yesterday saying he had over 100 emails on the Seattle facility closure from friends and associates, many of whom have jumped to the same incorrect conclusion that you did - that Merck is shutting down its integrative genomics and molecular profiling departments," a Merck spokesperson wrote to me in an E-mail. That spokesperson assured me, however, that "a majority of...