GSK’s Tres Cantos site houses major elements of our R&D high-throughput screening activities and GSK’s commercial operations in Spain. However, we have now also concentrated our DDW drug research in TB and malaria – efforts with a long history in GSK – into dedicated facilities on the site, with a full-time research staff committed solely to DDW.

As well as the centre’s TB and malaria focus, ideas and drug candidates for treating other neglected diseases of the developing world are pursued opportunistically, and the development of existing GSK drug candidates for such diseases will continue.

The Tres Cantos DDW scientific staff provide the wide range of skills – including chemistry, biology and toxicology – needed to better understand the disease targets and identify novel drug candidates for further development. Such a concentration of resources and skills maximises our ability to discover new medicines for DDW.

The Tres Cantos group is fully integrated with the rest of GSK’s R&D in order to ensure that we can bring all the relevant skills, technologies and resources to bear to achieve success in developing such discoveries. In this regard, GSK’s advantages of scale and our networks with key external partners are important.

In particular, access to GSK’s world-wide clinical development organisation is vital for the effective conduct of clinical trials. However, the DDW group at Tres Cantos, and its associated DDW drug development team in London, can also call on GSK’s expertise and staff in many other areas, such as screening, pre-clinical development and regulatory affairs.