GSK plans to establish three Centers for Excellence in Drug Discovery (CEDDs) in an effort to increase productivity. These will be in addition to eight existing centers.
These centers restructure research and development into disease-specific divisions. Many pharmaceutical companies are now streamlining their businesses in this way, although GSK first established CEDDs in 2000. Roche has just reported its plan to simplify its development into Disease Biology Areas.
One of these new centers will focus on macrolide technology in order to develop therapies in diseases such as asthma and cancer.
The company also said it expected to launch five major products in 2007 including the cancer drug Tykerb.