GSK aggressively pursues innovation

Food & Drug Packaging, July, 2005 by Lisa McTigue Pierce

GlaxoSmithKline may be No. 2 on our list based on overall pharmaceutical sales (for the second year running), but the company refuses to take a back seat when it comes to developing innovative products and packages.

GSK continues to strengthen its positions in pharmaceuticals (prescription and vaccines) and consumer health care (over-the-counter medicines, oral care and nutritional health care). As of first quarter 2005, GSK had 140 projects in clinical development, including 88 New Chemical Entities (NCEs), 32 product line extensions and 20 vaccines.

Among its promising projects are:

* An AIDS vaccine--GSK has teamed up with the not-for-profit International Aids Vaccine Initiative, to develop a vaccine based on a chimpanzee virus to trigger an immune response.

* A cervical cancer vaccine--The anti-cervical cancer vaccine is designed to help prevent young women from being infected by the human paillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted virus that's believed to be the cause of the cancer.

* A breast cancer pill-Interim test results of the company's experimental breast cancer pill Lapatinib showed good potential in shrinking solid tumors and/or stabilizing the disease. In a statement, GSK said that such drugs may reduce cancer "to an illness that can be managed with oral daily therapy."

Higher profits and improved efficiencies are the payoffs of GSK's continued integration efforts after its mergers with SmithKline Beecham in 2000 and Block Drug Co. in 2001. The company's strategies include manufacturing consolidations and sharing best practices, as well as driving innovations in products and packaging.

D. Bruce Cohen, director of U.S. Packaging Services, says, "As a team and as a company, we've grown together very well. I look at the company now as the fruition of a lot of hard work. We have a wonderful pipeline coming that's going to benefit patients."

Among the current packaging projects are:

* A new package for solid oral dose drugs--Scheduled for launch sometime within the next year, the pack will be more convenient, easier to use and designed to improve patient compliance.

* Safer self-injection devices--As GSK attempts to reach patients beyond the traditional health care professional, it will continue to investigate how to safely deliver injectible drugs for self-medication situations. For example, a second-generation self-injector for its migraine medicine is much more compact than the previous design and is also refillable.

(Also see Food & Drug Packaging's Dec. 2004 issue for three in-depth articles on GlaxoSmithKline.)