Struggling pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca (NYSE:AZN) will cut about 1,600 jobs in a corporate restructuring intended to turn around the U.K.’s second-biggest drugmaker.

AstraZeneca will focus research in Cambridge, England; Gaithersburg, Maryland; and Moelndal, Sweden, the company said in a statement today. Astra also will move its corporate headquarters from London to Cambridge, where it plans to spend $500 million on a new facility.

The jobs to be eliminated equal roughly 3.1 percent of AstraZeneca’s workforce of about 51,700 at the end of December. Those job cuts will happen primarily in the U.S. and the U.K The plan will help improve research productivity at AstraZeneca, said CEO Pascal Soriot, who was named CEO last year, replacing David Brennan, after a series of drug-development setbacks. Included in those setbacks were compounds partnered with Winston-Salem company Targacept (NASDAQ:TRGT) that failed to yield positive results in clinical trial.

The announcement means “a strong commitment to the U.K.” and “that we believe the science is strong in Cambridge,” Soriot said in a telephone interview with Bloomberg News. “We wanted to come closer to outstanding science.”

Focus on biologicals

Soriot said another priority of the reorganization is to “bring closer to one another” researchers working on drugs made from human cells, known as biologicals, with those working on medicines based on chemical compounds.

The overhaul shows the influence of MedImmune Inc., the American biotechnology company acquired by AstraZeneca in 2007, according to Eric Le Berrigaud, an analyst at Bryan Garnier & Co. in Paris. MedImmune, based in Gaithersburg, had a research site in Cambridge.

“MedImmune is becoming central in AstraZeneca’s R&D organization,” he told Bloomberg News. “The initial impressions – that MedImmune people are gaining power within the company, that Astra wants to grow bigger in biologics –seem to be confirmed.”

AstraZeneca will discuss the plan with employees in coming days before it briefs investors and analysts on strategy in New York on March 21, Soriot said. The restructuring, which will be completed by 2016, will lead to $1.4 billion in one-time charges, of which $800 million will be cash expenses,AstraZeneca said.

The company predicted cost savings of about $190 million a year by 2016 from the measures.

“Given the limited financial benefits, this deal is really about improving science, and the ability to capture innovation and recruit top-tier scientists,” Citigroup analyst Mark Dainty wrote to investors. “The pay-off is likely to take several years to be realized but is evidence of sensible organizational change, in our view.”

AstraZeneca will end research and development work at its facility at Alderly Park in the UK. It will move about 1,600 jobs from there to a nearby manufacturing facility in Macclesfield, the new center in Cambridge or company sites overseas. The company said at least 700 non-research jobs will remain at Alderly Park, and it will explore options for “a successful future” for that facility.

Gaithersburg will be home to much of the company’s U.S.- based drug development, as well as jobs in global marketing and sales of U.S. specialty-care drugs. About 1,200 jobs will be moved from Wilmington, Delaware, which will remain North American commercial headquarters, with about 2,000 people.

Moelndal, near Gothenburg in Sweden, will continue to be a global research center focusing on chemical compounds, the company said. Of the total 1,600 job cuts, about 650 will be in the U.S.

No big acquisitions expected

The reorganization shouldn’t be interpreted as a step leading to a big acquisition, Soriot said.

“We are still open to the idea of a larger deal” if the company were to find something “that makes sense, but it’s a low probability,” the 53-year-old CEO said during the Bloomberg interview. “We can return to growth with what we have in our hands.”

Like other big drugmakers, AstraZeneca is being squeezed by the weak global economy, government health programs trying to hold down spending, rising research costs and a surge of new generic competition to blockbuster drugs that had brought in billions every year.

In January, AstraZeneca said generic competition in Western Europe and other areas was slashing sales of top sellers including Nexium for severe heartburn, Seroquel IR for schizophrenia and Crestor for high cholesterol. The company’s total sales dropped to $28 billion last year, from $33.6 billion in 2011, while net income plunged 37 percent.

So like most of its rivals, AstraZeneca is trying to do more with less staff and improve its success rate in the laboratory and in the expensive patient testing needed to get new drugs approved. The process generally takes a decade or more and costs more than $1 billion per drug, averaging in the costs for hundreds of failed drug candidates.

In early-afternoon U.S. trading, AstraZeneca shares werew down 22 cents at $46.24.

(The Associated Press and Bloomberg News contributed to this report)