ZURICH (Reuters) - Novartis is to cut up to 680 jobs in its development organisation, which helps bring its drugs to market, the Swiss pharmaceuticals company said on Tuesday.

Around 440 jobs will go in Switzerland and up to 240 in the United States over the next two to three years, the Basel-based company said.

The job eliminations are separate from a restructuring programme which could lead up to 8,000 of Novartis's 78,000 global workforce being cut, it said.

Rival Swiss drugmaker Roche also announced earlier this year that it was cutting 345 jobs in product development.

Novartis currently employs around 12,500 in development which includes handling drug regulations, analytics, and support functions like quality assurance.

The staff are also involved in designing the production process for drugs after research work has been completed.

Around 3,000 of the roles are currently in Switzerland and 2,000 in the United States, meaning around 14% of the positions in those countries will be affected.

Meanwhile, the company said it would add roles over the next two to three years, meaning there will be a net reduction overall of 1-2% at a global level.

Novartis said the changes were designed to reshape its capabilities to access local talent such as data scientists and regulation specialists in Britain.

It said it still remained committed to development work in both Switzerland and the United States.

"We remain committed to development in Switzerland as our innovation hub for complex development, and providing strategic leadership as the global headquarters for development," a spokesperson said.

"The US remains a key development hub with strong representation in our global program teams, responsible for advancing our medicines pipeline."

(Reporting by John Revill; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)