The firm has said it will cut this number of positions in phases within the next six months at its manufacturing plant in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Pfizer revealed in a surprise announcement in October that it was abandoning Exubera after the product's disappointing sales performance, ending months of speculation as to whether the fledging world-first inhalable insulin product would sink or swim in the fierce waters of pharma.

The firm promptly stopped manufacturing of the device at its plant in Indiana and placed 600 of its 750 workers at the site on paid leave until a decision is made as to the future of the facility, in which Pfizer has already invested over $300m over the last five years especially for the Exubera product line.

It appears their fate has now been revealed. The remaining 150 or so workers will keep their jobs until at least the end of the year, as a section of the facility that is dedicated to making the antibiotics Unasyn and Cefobid will continue to operate.

However, according to reports in local news outlets a declining demand for these antibiotics, which are subject to generic competition, will cause it to take a hard look at that business line as well and the company is still evaluating its long-term options for the plant.

"Unfortunately, at the present time we have no other products that can utilize the highly specialized technologies in the Exubera facility", Nat Ricciardi, president of Pfizer's Global Manufacturing, was reported as saying by Indystar.com.

"Looking at the future, we have various options that we will be considering… but we really have no plans so far. We don't have anything at this point that we can point our fingers and say 'this is destined for Terre Haute'", Jay Cayado, Pfizer global manufacturing vice president and team leader for the Americas, told Tribstar.com.

It appears that the future of the site may indeed be in jeopardy, especially since Pfizer is in the midst of an overhaul of its business and the implementation of cost-cutting strategies that were announced last year.

As part of this, Pfizer announced plans to reduce its number of manufacturing sites from 93 to 48 by the end of this year including the closure of five R&D sites and the relocation of projects amongst remaining facilities and external sites.

The company is also in the process of reducing its staff by almost 10,000 - 10 per cent of its global workforce - in a bid to save $1bn by the end of 2008.

These latest job cuts add to the 200 that were already axed at Pfizer's Portage and Kalamazoo sites shortly after the October announcement that Exubera would be dropped - at a cost of $2.8bn.

Pfizer's decision has also impacted its Exubera manufacturing partners, West Pharmaceutical Services and Consort Medical (formerly Bespak), who have reluctantly had to slash hundreds of Exubera-related jobs between them and close facilities.