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The arrival of activist investor Elliott Management on the doorstep of Glaxosmithkline s glistening headquarters in Brentford has caught Emma Walmsley and her team on the hop.
The pharmaceutical group is aware of investor disquiet about a lagging share price compared with peers on both sides of the Atlantic.
The crossover in valuations between its main UK counterpart Astrazeneca and GSK, previously regarded as the UK s top rated big pharma group, has underlined perceived under-performance.
Under pressure: GSK shares have been a disappointment, dropping 14 per cent since Emma Walmsley took the helm
Walmsley has moved aggressively to change this. The choice of highly-rated Hal Barron to take charge of pharma and R&D with the aim of bringing new biotech skills to the table and speeding up new compounds has been part of that. It would be a huge step backwards were one of Elliott s demands be to pare back research spend, which is up 30 per cent since Walmsley s appointment as chi
Dive Brief:
GlaxoSmithKline will stop enrolling cancer patients into two mid-stage studies testing a closely watched cancer immunotherapy alongside Merck & Co. s Keytruda, marking another setback for the British drugmaker s ambitions in oncology research.
The decision followed a recommendation from an independent monitoring committee that oversees one of the trials. In a Wednesday statement, GSK said it will evaluate the totality of the data to determine the impact on its broader development plans for the drug, called feladilimab.
Feladilimab is a top drug prospect for GSK, one of a class of experimental cancer medicines known as ICOS receptor agonists. But their potential may now be in question after GSK s decision and the failure of a study testing a similar drug from Jounce Therapeutics last fall.
The world s largest vaccine business has been on the sidelines of the pandemic response.
GSK is facing an exodus of US vaccine scientists, with several dozen leaving in the past year.
Former GSK employees expressed frustration with the company s bureaucracy and pandemic response.
On a mild day in December 2016, GlaxoSmithKline executives snipped an orange ribbon, ushering in what they hoped would be a new chapter for the pharmaceutical giant.
GSK had just helped the world respond to the viral scares of H1N1 and Ebola, and its leaders envisioned growing their swanky vaccine-research center in suburban Rockville, Maryland, into a biopreparedness powerhouse, equipped with the research talent and manufacturing might to stop pandemics in their tracks.
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Monoclonal antibodies: GSK and Vir to seek US approval for their COVID-19 candidate, EMA starts rolling review of Lilly s medicines By Jane Byrne GSK and its partner, Vir Biotechnology, report that their jointly developed monoclonal antibody, VIR-7831, reduces hospitalization and risk of death in early treatment of adults with COVID-19.
A global phase 3 clinical trial, COMET-ICE, based its initial analysis on data from 583 patients at risk of hospital admission.
The partners said VIR-7831 is a new treatment for people with mild to moderate COVID-19 illness, and the efficacy seen in the trial was such that an independent data monitoring committee recommended stopping the study early; enrolment of patients has ended.