The race to vaccinate a planet
Healthcare Feature
GlaxoSmithKline
The race to vaccinate a planet 2
Issue 101 · Business Enquirer Magazine
Business Enquirer Magazine · Issue 101
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PROJECT DIRECTED BY
WRITTEN BY
Jamie Waite
Jay Benmehidi
Healthcare Feature In our post-COVID brave new world, the leading brands of Big Pharma, an industry that has been subject to no little mistrust over the years, are the rock stars of our time. The pharma sector has carried the hopes and dreams of billions over a difficult year of lockdowns, tragedy and frustration, and its success in rolling-out safe, high efficacy vaccines has won the sector the kind of adoration it could only have dreamed of in early-2020. Leading the world’s foremost vaccines business is a labour of love COVID-19 has fired the starting gun in a race between the world’s pharma giants to develop, manufacture and distribute the high-efficacy vaccines needed to protect a planet. For a President of GlaxoSmithKline’s Global Vaccines division, like Roger Connor, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Not that he would have it any other way – despite the scale of the task at hand, for Roger, his role at GSK is very much a labour of love:
“As President of GSK Global Vaccines, I have the enormous privilege to lead a global organisation whose products help protect people from disease at all stages of their life – from birth to older age. It’s an incredible science-led business with amazing people who work on the discovery, development and manufacture of vaccines every day.” What I love about my role is that I learn something new every day – be that about the science, the technology and the manufacturing (the engineer in me is still there) or working with our external partners, governments and multilateral organisations or talking to our employees and learning from them – and doing all this in the knowledge that the work we do makes such a difference to people’s lives worldwide.
GSK employees, working on the production of antibiotics
As the world’s biggest vaccines manufacturer, in GSK we make hundreds of millions of doses in a typical year... Covid-19 is going to require billions. Roger Connor, President of GSK’s Global Vaccines division
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Issue 101 · Business Enquirer Magazine
Business Enquirer Magazine · Issue 101
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Healtchare Feature Research of chemical compounds at GSK laboratory
GlaxoSmithKline A two-decade journey of success in pharmaceuticals Roger’s broad and varied professional journey in the pharmaceutical industry stretches back more than two decades. An industry lifer who has very much come up through the ranks at GSK, prior to being appointed President of GSK Global Vaccines in 2018. Roger held a number of leadership roles in various areas of the business, including finance, corporate strategy and manufacturing, as well as GSK’s global pharmaceutical and consumer healthcare manufacturing organisation from 2013 to 2018.
GlaxoSmithKline is one of the world’s truly elite brands, not only in its home industry but in business as a whole In this role he managed 75 sites across more than 30 countries, and was accountable for the leadership of 33,000 employees. His academic credentials are, much like that of his professional career, impressive: Roger holds a degree in Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering from Queen’s University, Belfast and a Master’s in Manufacturing Leadership from Cambridge University.
GSK employees, working on the production of medicine
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Issue 101 · Business Enquirer Magazine
Business Enquirer Magazine · Issue 101
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GlaxoSmithKline GlaxoSmithKline: a top-five pharma giant of unparalleled capability GlaxoSmithKline is one of the world’s truly elite brands, not only in its home industry but in business as a whole. Recognised the world over as one of the top pharmaceutical developers and manufacturers in the world, GlaxoSmithKline operates offices in more than 100 countries around the globally. In 2018, it was ranked the fifth-largest pharmaceutical company in the world by measure of its US$43 billion revenue. From its global headquarters in Brentford, the UK, GlaxoSmithKline oversees an enterprise of astonishing reach and capability.
Healthcare Feature GSK’s ability to protect the lives of countless millions is a source of great pride and motivation. In his words, GSK wants to get “as many doses to people as we can”.
GSK employee during the prodution process of a drug
“As the world’s biggest vaccines manufacturer, in GSK we make hundreds of millions of doses in a typical year,” he said. “Covid-19 is going to require billions.” Machine for drug production, GSK Brazil
GSK have a number of international partners who have been central to the company’s work in producing life changing products and medicines, such as Cytiva, who have been integral to their success, as well as Securecell who have also proven to be an invaluable partner. The list of goes on but relationships with such important key partners have been a cornerstone of GSK’s success over the years. A world-class global vaccines pioneer with a footprint spanning 160 countries As President of GSK Global Vaccines, the world’s leading vaccines company by revenue, Roger Connor presides over a near US$7 billion enterprise that delivers vaccines to over 160 countries. As the numbers suggest, it is a truly expansive and substantial business. GSK’s vaccines arm has a broad portfolio of more than 40 vaccines to date, with 14 more candidate vaccines currently in development. Naturally, such a worldclass enterprise has an equally large and worldclass workforce to match. The team is made up of over 17,000 employees across 11 countries all of whom are working to deliver the 2 million plus doses that are needed every day to help protect people all around the world. For Roger,
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Issue 101 · Business Enquirer Magazine
Business Enquirer Magazine · Issue 101
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Healthcare Feature
GlaxoSmithKline Giving the world what it needs most: a solution
Retaking its place at the front of the race to vaccinate
this is not a mistake it will make again. Certainly, GSK will not be.
The campaign to vaccinate has been an incredibly difficult and complex one, not only for Roger at GSK but surely every senior leadership executive working anywhere in pharma.
It is no secret that for all GSK’s substantial resources and expertise, the company has, at least initially, ceded ground in the vaccine arms race, however there should be no question of Roger’s and GSK’s intent to make up lost ground – the recent release positive of positive clinical trial data from its GSK-Sanofi COVID-19 vaccine, which will soon propel GSK back into the leading pack of vaccine developers, is certainly a statement of intent in this regard.
With this objective in mind, the company has already started a vast and far-reaching restructuring program, which will see the pharma giant link its biopharma and vaccines arms together. For Roger, GSK’s vaccines business is a crown jewel that has been undervalued to some extent, and by boosting the division to enhance its pandemic preparedness plans, he can ensure that, when disaster strikes again, GSK is at the vanguard of efforts to find a solution:
And then there’s the company’s partnership with Novavax, which has also borne fruit. As part of a new deal with the UK government, the pharma giant has been tasked with manufacturing up to 60 million doses of a new Novavax coronavirus vaccine at its Barnard Castle facility in the north-east of England – work which is already underway.
“We’ve got one of the widest range of technology platforms of any vaccine company,” he said. To prepare for the next pandemic, “you need to have fill-finish, you need to have bulk, you need to have technology choice, you need to have an R&D engine that connects very well to academia, to government monitoring of virus evolution, and GSK brings all of those things.”
For all the industry’s incredible achievements over the past year, during which it has pioneered effective, cutting-edge new vaccines at all-but impossible speed, is difficult to emphasise the gravity of the challenge that companies like GSK still face. Whilst some countries are tentatively opening the shutters, the global economy largely remains paralysed. The world hasn’t experienced an event such as the COVID-19 pandemic in over a century and the health of an entire planet is at stake. Roger, like his peers, are grappling with a unique, wholly unpredictable situation that has the potential to throw a curve ball at any moment. All this must be navigated, and Roger must ensure that GSK delivers what the world needs it to deliver: a solution.
“We were approached by the UK’s vaccines taskforce who we’ve been working with for a while and they said could we help with Novovax to bring the vaccine through,” he said. Presently, the 60 million vaccine deal is exclusive to the UK only, but GSK has cast it’s net wide and is also involved in manufacturing vaccines with companies based in other countries including Belgium and Canada. “This pandemic is on such a scale it’s going to need multiple vaccines so we have always been talking to many different players around the world to try and create what we think of as a global response,” he said.
GSK employees working on the production of vaccines in Brazil
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Issue 101 · Business Enquirer Magazine
Preparing for the pandemic of the future Going forward, GSK, much like the rest of the world, is preparing for the next pandemic, which whether it comes in a decade or another century, is coming. When COVID-19 struck in early 2020, the world was collectively caught flat-footed but
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