Life Science Leader Magazine

NOV 2014

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EXCLUSIVE LIFE SCIENCE FEATURE leaders LIFESCIENCELEADER.COM NOVEMBER 2014 24 GLAXOSMITHKLINE — REFOCUSING, RESHAPING ONCOLOGY R&D; By W. Koberstein oon after my first conversa- tions with GlaxoSmithKline about interviewing its head of pharma R&D;, the news hit. In a mega-swap of product lines with another global pharma giant, GSK gave up its entire commercial oncology portfolio to Novartis in exchange for the Swiss company's vaccine line; at the same time, the two companies combined their consumer health units into a single busi- ness with GSK as the majority owner. Oncology was no small part of its drug division at the time, accounting for about 4 percent (about $1.5 billion) of phar- maceutical revenues before the Novartis deal. Early on, it took reading past the head- lines to grasp GSK's full intentions. Essentially the company is refocusing its oncology R&D;, all the while continuing to reshape the entire pharma R&D; organiza- tion. The leader in charge of the transi- tion is Dr. Patrick Vallance, president of Pharmaceuticals R&D.; A former academic researcher, Vallance headed drug discov- ery before taking on the entire pharma R&D; unit in 2012. Thus he has witnessed the good, bad, and the less-than-pretty results coming from the organization during his eight years with the company. After a compara- tive dry spell, GSK staged a recovery in drug development in recent years, with six new drugs entering the market since 2012. The company's bonus program for dis- covery scientists, giving a small incentive at proof-of-concept and a bigger payment at approval, turned out to be a good sur- rogate marker for the new-drug surge. "Medicines can fail at any stage, so we didn't want to give big rewards at the end of Phase 2a; we wanted to signal there was a big reward to be given at that point, which would come when the medicine becomes a medicine, and we paid up on that promise with the product approvals," says Vallance. Those successes, however, have not stopped the R&D; transformation already under way — and, in fact, the new prod- ucts are more reflective of the company's past than predictive of its future direc- S GLAXOSMITHKLINE REFOCUSING, RESHAPING ONCOLOGY R&D; W A Y N E K O B E R S T E I N Executive Editor

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