GlaxoSmithKline said yesterday it had the potential to file up to 20 new drugs for approval before 2020 as it seeks to revitalise a portfolio hit by falling sales of best-selling inhaled lung treatment Advair.
Seven of these products could reach the market before the end of the decade, it added.
Britain’s biggest drugmaker is trying to boost low investor expectations for its product pipeline by hosting its first research and development day in more than a decade.
The company highlighted advanced and early-stage projects in respiratory medicine, immunology, oncology, vaccines, HIV and other infections, andrare diseases.
“The level of innovation in this portfolio is substantial. We believe this is critical in today’s operating environment as players seek to balance pressures of pricing and demand,” chief executive Andrew Witty said.
Around 80 per cent of the medicines and vaccines presented have the potential to be first-in-class with novel mechanisms of action, the company believes. GSK also announced a collaboration with Merck, which will involve a clinical trial to test its experimental OX40 cancer drug alongside the US company’s Keytruda in solid tumours.
GSK is still investing in oncology, despite having sold its marketed cancer drugs to Novartis in a $20 billion three-way asset swap that closed in March.
The Novartis deal marked a shift of focus by GSK towards greater reliance on consumer healthcare pro-ducts and vaccines, but the company wants to show it remains a major force in drug research.
Investor confidence in its ability to bring important new medicines to market has been shaken by past setbacks, including the late-stage failures of a new kind of heart medicine and a cancer vaccine.
Near-term hopes now hinge on new injection Nucala for severe asthma, for which a US approval decision is due today, as well as experimental shingles vaccine Shingrix, sirukumab for rheumatoid arthritis, a long-acting HIV medicine and daprodustat for anaemia.
GSK’s R&D event in New York is one of three high-profile investor days being held by major European pharmaceutical companies this week. Roche will hold a pharma day in London tomorrow, while Sanofi is hosting a strategy seminar in Paris on November 6.