GSK Jumps Into Growing China R&D Space
GlaxoSmithKline has joined a growing list of big pharma companies expanding in China, launching a research and development center based in Shanghai, the company announced May 24.
The center will focus on neurodegeneration disorders, including multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease, GSK said.
The company's current research efforts in this area include development of an extended-release version of Parkinson's therapy ReQuip (ropinirole), currently pending at FDA, and phase III studies of diabetes treatment Avandia (rosiglitazone) for Alzheimer's ("The Pink Sheet" DAILY, April 13, 2007).
The China facility will "in time, become an end-to-end R&D organization from target identification to late-stage clinical work," GSK told PharmAsia News. It will be "our global center in that therapeutic area, not just China."
GSK is no stranger to conducting R&D in Asia. In 2004, the firm announced the formation of its Center for Research in Cognitive and Neurodegenerative Disorder in Singapore.
The company expects to hire roughly 50-60 people in Shanghai during the next year and "within some years, we'd hope it would be one of our larger R&D centers," the firm said.
GSK indicated it has been "sufficiently encouraged by [intellectual property] developments" in China to move forward with a large R&D commitment.
Joining GSK to head the China R&D center is Jingwu Zang, former founding director of the Institute of Health Sciences in Shanghai, which is affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine. Zang will report to GSK R&D Chairman Moncef Slaoui.
Related to its expansion in China, GSK will refocus its U.K.-based neurology discovery efforts to concentrate on developing therapies for pain, epilepsy and brain injury, the company said.
The R&D center will broaden GSK's presence in China, which currently includes manufacturing plants in Shanghai, Tianjin and Suzhou, and a collaboration with the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica's combinatorial chemistry lab.
China has increasingly become an area of focus for big pharma. Last year, both Novartis and AstraZeneca announced plans to open China R&D centers ("The Pink Sheet" DAILY, Nov. 6, 2006). And in February, Roche highlighted its Shanghai-based R&D center as an important element of its realigned global R&D model ("The Pink Sheet" DAILY, Feb. 5, 2007).
- Joshua Berlin
This article is reprinted from "The Pink Sheet" DAILY – May 25, 2007
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