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Contribution to global health

What is GSK doing to respond to society's healthcare needs?

We make an important contribution to society's needs by researching and developing new treatments and vaccines for unmet medical needs. Our product portfolio and pipeline are targeted at serious diseases in both developed and developing countries.

What we are doing

Despite revolutionary advances in healthcare over the last century, ill health and disease continue to place a huge burden on society. As a global pharmaceutical and healthcare company, stakeholders rightly expect us to address society's healthcare needs: from the AIDS epidemic in Africa and Asia, to the health needs of an ageing population in the developed world and the huge global growth in chronic diseases such as diabetes.

Our response to society's healthcare needs includes:

• Our range of vaccines which prevent life-threatening diseases
• Our investment in R&D into diseases affecting developing and developed countries

Preventing disease
Vaccines play a major role in preventing disease and are an integral element of public health programmes in most countries. Immunisation is acknowledged by WHO as being ‘among the most cost-effective of health investments'.¹

GSK is among the world's top vaccine providers. We have over 30 vaccines approved for marketing and over 20 in our pipeline, one-third of which target diseases particularly prevalent in the developing world. We believe our vaccine pipeline is the largest in the industry.

GSK vaccines are included in immunisation campaigns in 169 countries worldwide. Our portfolio and pipeline cover most of the leading causes of childhood mortality, as defined by the WHO.

In 2007 we supplied 1.1 billion vaccine doses. Of these 78 per cent were shipped for use in developing countries.

We launched Cervarix, our new cervical cancer vaccine, in 2007. Eighty-five per cent of cervical cancer deaths are in the developing world. We have submitted Cervarix to the WHO for pre-qualification which will speed up the registration process in developing countries. Cervarix will be made available to developing countries at reduced prices as part of our tiered pricing commitment for vaccines.

Investing in R&D
Research and development (R&D) is at the core of our business, with 85 per cent of our revenues derived from the sale of prescription medicines and vaccines. We invested £3,327 million in R&D in 2007 and have over 150 prescription medicines and vaccines in clinical development.

Treating ill health
Healthcare needs differ between high- and low-income countries, with poorer countries suffering a much higher incidence of infectious diseases.

Our focus is not just on products relevant to high-income countries. For example, our product portfolio includes medicines and vaccines to prevent or treat six of the ten leading causes of death (as defined by the WHO) in both high- and low-income countries. In 2007 GSK had products listed in 17 out of 27 therapeutic areas of the WHO Essential Medicines List.

We have provided more information on how our products and pipeline reflect the global disease burden in our CR Report, see www.gsk.com/responsibility

Q. Is it true that research productivity is falling in large pharmaceutical companies? How is GSK managing this?

A. Investment in pharmaceutical R&D has risen while the number of new medicines gaining regulatory approval has remained relatively constant or decreased. We believe there are many reasons for this including:

• An increasing focus on R&D into chronic degenerative diseases (for example Alzheimer's) which are scientifically challenging, require longer clinical trials and have increased failure rates
• Significant investment by industry in new technologies which will help deliver innovative medicines in the longer term
• More extensive requirements from regulators and healthcare payers including the need to conduct larger clinical studies

Our approach is to focus on meeting patients' needs and increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of R&D. For example, we have established Centres of Excellence for Drug Discovery (CEDDs) focused on discovering innovative medicines for a particular therapeutic area. CEDDs combine the entrepreneurial approach of a small company with the resources and reach of a larger organisation. In 2007 we established two new CEDDs to focus on immunoinflammation and infectious diseases.

¹ WHO Fact Sheet. No. 208

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