GSK Vaccines An amazing place to create the future

GSK Vaccines, the vaccine division of GlaxoSmithKline, is the leading vaccines company in the world, delivering over 2 million vaccine doses every day to people living in 158 countries. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), only clean water rivals vaccination in its ability to save lives.

With a portfolio exceeding 30 commercial vaccines, 17.000 employees work at GSK Vaccines in more than 100 countries. Over the last ten years, in Belgium, this division invested 1 billion euros in R&D as well as 3 billion euros in infrastructure and capacity building. Furthermore, GSK Vaccines has become the largest pharmaceutical company in Belgium with >9,000 employees. In total, more than 2,500 vaccine scientists work in the three global R&D centres in Belgium, Italy and the US.

GSK Vaccines relies upon innovation and partnership to help with various possible future challenges. In the field of innovation, GSK Vaccines builds upon a 100-year legacy of vaccine develop ment. It is well-known for its high quality vaccines such as recombinant vaccines, pediatric vaccines, vaccines with new adjuvants, and vaccines against malaria, respiratory diseases, and meningitis to name a few. In 2018 it launched a new vaccine against herpes zoster, the virus that is responsible for zona.

At GSK Vaccines, the culture of partnership is well established and the R&D centers collaborate with many external partners such as the Belgian universities, the NIH in United States, and other academic centers, biotech companies, and through initiatives funded by the European Commission through the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI). One such IMI initiative is the ADVANCE project, which is established to develop and test methods and guidelines in order to pave the way for a framework capable of rapidly delivering reliable data on the benefits and risks of vaccines that are on the market.

As for the culture of dealing with many possible futures, GSK Vaccines is committed to empower patients to choose the right vaccines and treatments. Moreover, the division is betting on a shift from prophylactic vaccines to therapeutic vaccines so as to move towards a cure, stop or at least slow down disease. Over

Dr Emmanuel Hanon, Senior Vice President of Vaccine Research at GSK Vaccines

the last 20 years the division has invested heavily in cuttingedge technologies to develop such vaccines. In parallel, it strives to develop candidate vaccines against antibiotic-resistant bacteria (AMR).

Additionally, GSK Vaccines strives to cut the vaccine development times by half, such times currently lasting up to 30 years. Such shortened timelines may be possible thanks to potential breakthroughs in sciences and technologies, including the self-amplifying RNA (SAM) platforms that make it possible to identify a genetic code of the antigen, the active ingredient of the vaccine, to generate a candidate vaccine more quickly – a revolution for the manufacturing phase.

GSK Vaccines has defined its R&D key priorities: a new vaccine against a respiratory virus (RSV) causing bronchiolitis in babies and pneumonia in adults, a new category of vaccines for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD), reducing antibiotic resistance (AMR) through disease prevention, therapeutic vaccines and personalized vaccines. To achieve this goal, the division applies new technologies relying on digitalization, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to design vaccine antigens and measure their broader benefit to society through health data analysis. All these breakthroughs will thoroughly expand the universe of the patient… and that of pharmaceutical industry.

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