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Research and innovation

Research & development (R&D) of new medicines and vaccines is at the core of our business, and makes a significant contribution to society.

New drugs have brought huge benefits to the health and quality of life of millions of people over the last 100 years. But continued R&D remains as important as ever. There are still many serious, debilitating and life threatening illnesses for which there are no effective treatments or where treatments could be significantly improved.

In 2004 we invested £2.8 billion ($5.1 billion) in R&D. Nearly 15,000 people work in R&D at GSK.

There are many ethical concerns relating to biomedical and pharmaceutical research - from the use of new technologies to the objective reporting of clinical trial results. GSK is committed to the highest ethical and scientific standards in all our R&D work. This section explains our approach to animal research, the conduct of clinical trials and the public disclosure of clinical trial results. For information on our approach to new technologies see Ethical issues in R&D.

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