GSK plots return to growth with launch of 20 new drugs by 2020
pharmafile | November 4, 2015 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | GSK, Sir Andrew Witty, financial results, product pipeline
GSK has set out plans to boost its flagging performance with the launch of up to 20 new drugs by the end of the decade.
The London-based company revealed 40 pipeline treatments and vaccines, which chief executive Sir Andrew Witty told investors would deliver fresh growth. Glaxo is currently focusing on HIV and other viral infections, respiratory medicine, oncology, immuno-inflammation, vaccines and rare diseases.
Twenty of these treatments are intended to be filed for approval by 2020, GSK senior management revealed. It is hoped that their successful launches will plug the profit gap created by falling sales of the company’s blockbuster asthma and COPD treatment Advair, which declined 18% to £397 million in Q3 2015.
GSK’s first R&D event in over a decade coincided with revelations that the UK pharma giant rejected a recent takeover approach from American rival Pfizer, which has since turned its attentions to Allergan, as it plots a lucrative tax inversion with the conclusion of a deal for the Dublin-based company.
In the short-term, GSK said its severe asthma treatment Nucala (mepolizumab), which is awaiting FDA approval, will be a driver of revenue growth, despite a relatively small target market of around 400,000. It is also awaiting returns from its shingles vaccine Shingrix and rheumatoid arthritis treatment sirukumab.
The event also provided further details on the recently-announced research collaboration with Merck, which will study the German company’s Keytruda in combination with GSK’s anti-OX40 monoclonal antibody GSK3174998. GSK hopes to file GSK3174998 for approval between 2018 and 2020, along with five other oncology drugs.
In the longer-term, GSK is looking to file nine respiratory drugs and eight inflammatory candidates between 2021 to 2025, as well as its hepatitis C candidate GSK2878175.
Andrew Witty claimed novel mechanisms of action for about 80% of the treatments, which he said could make them first-in-class medicines. “I am very confident of our ability to deliver very substantial new product sales growth momentum over the next five, 10 and 15 years.”
Despite the intention for the investor event to raise investor confidence, the announcements appeared to have little impact, and GSK shares fell 1.5% yesterday.
Joel Levy
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