How GSK is Unlocking New Therapies Through Delivery Partnerships

Tell us about the work you are leading at GSK.

GSK has three main R&D focuses: oncology, respiratory and immunology, and infectious diseases. I’m in the vaccines and infectious disease group, which develops vaccines, antibodies, and small molecule inhibitors for bacterial, viral and therapeutic targets.

Within the team, I am responsible for identifying new technologies and platform areas for us to leverage, whether in academia, industry or public institutions. We want to make sure we have the leading assets, technologies and expertise ready to treat and prevent disease. 

 

What do you look for in academic partners?

Academia brings subject matter expertise and a focus on big questions. Academic labs can go deep into the science to understand things like mechanisms of action or how molecules interact. In other words, we don’t expect a phase three vaccine. We look to academia for answers on specific questions that we can’t answer internally. Oftentimes, that develops into assets or know-how we can take advantage of. 

For example, take the challenge of hybrid immunity. In many cases, we have people with both exposure to seasonal pathogens as well as vaccine-induced immunogenicity. How do we model and use that information to improve vaccines which have similar issues? These are the kinds of questions we could go to academia for.

"We see lots of companies showing small improvements, but how does that enable us to tackle something we weren’t able to before?"

What about industry partnerships?

We are looking for technologies that will enable us to unlock new therapies, accelerate our development timelines, or provide more durable protection. We see lots of companies showing small improvements, but how does that enable us to tackle something we weren’t able to before?

 

Can you speak to any recent successful partnerships? 

One of our biggest strategic partners is NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) of the NIH (National Institutes of Health). For our recent RSV vaccine, Arexvy, the technology came out of NIH and a lot of the work done to derisk the vaccine was done by NIAID’s Vaccine Research Center, where they were able to show that they could lock the antigen in a pre-fusion form, which before this, was not able to be done. Once that happened, GSK began working with NIH on this vaccine. That same technology went on to be the basis of the SARS CoV-2 vaccines. They were able to lock that antigen spike protein in its pre-fusion form. This partnership paid dividends much beyond Arexvy and RSV, and it led us to be the first vaccine manufacturers to have an RSV vaccine on the market.

Another example – We are partnering with a group called Elegen, based out of California. This is a small company, and their technology is greatly accelerating our mRNA vaccine development. Going back to what I said earlier, we look for partnerships that unlock new technologies and really move science forward. 

 

When evaluating companies, what kind of data or derisking do you look for?

For most companies, it's not about the stage of development. If you look at Elegen, they were at a very early stage, but they had something that was a game changer, allowing us to expedite our mRNA vaccine development. It’s a seesaw of risk versus reward. Are these companies offering something good enough that we want to come in at an early stage, or do we need to wait and see, understanding another company might swoop in the meantime? For us, it’s always about how much you can advance the science right now. What is the promise versus where are you right now?

Sometimes, it isn’t possible to fully derisk your asset unless you partner with a company like GSK. When working with an early-stage company, I want to be completely transparent. This may not work right now, but that doesn't mean that six months from now we don't want to come back and have this conversation. I need to learn more about technology’s value proposition, what you need from GSK, and how we can work together.

"In the end, it always comes down to the science, not the buzzwords."

How does GSK partner with companies? 

GSK does not have an investment arm because we prefer to collaborate. We see more value in collaborating and providing industry mentorship to get across hurdles early on. I think the best type of collaboration is when we both have skin in the game and develop assets together. For example, we provide an antigen or adjuvant, and the company develops their platform around it. We can then use our resources to test and evaluate and iterate as needed. 

 

What advice do you have for companies interested in partnerships? 

The number one thing we need to know is: What is your differentiator and how will you help us enable a new vaccine or therapy? In the end, it always comes down to the science and that’s what I want to focus on in our conversations. Improvements are only consequential if they help us get ahead of diseases and improve patient lives. You need to show us how your product or asset will help us to do that, starting with the science. 

If you have data to derisk that, whether animal data or otherwise, that will help us make a more educated decision, that’s helpful. But people tend to focus on smaller details and buzzwords to sell their ideas, not the big picture of how your technology will get a vaccine to a patient. I don’t want to be sold; I want to see how this can lead to a phase shift in what we can be doing. 

You can see this rationale played out with AI models. For a while, every new company advertised how AI models were being incorporated into their technology. Some were legitimate, and some weren’t. Then we saw a game changer with GPT creating a phase shift in what we can do. And now many new companies are advertising the use of GPT, whether it’s needed or not. In the end, it always comes down to the science, not the buzzwords.

What is actually important to drive business innovation in the vaccine space?

I don’t believe in innovation for the sake of innovation. There needs to be an added value. For example, we just went through a pandemic where a needle and a syringe did a pretty good job vaccinating billions of people globally. So, if you have a new administration technology, it needs to be really, really good for us to choose to change all of our processes to incorporate this new technology. That’s essentially a multi-billion dollar investment internally if we want to move from needle and syringe. You need to have a value proposition that matches what we would need to invest to be able to do that. 

Even with mRNA – it's a hot topic now and it does do a lot of good things – but it doesn’t solve every problem. It is just a tool in the toolbox. GSK doesn’t need to rely on a single platform; we have mRNA, but also proteins, adjuvants, multiple delivery technologies, AI, structural biology and other technologies that we are able to leverage to make sure we have the right tools for the job. While mRNA is able to tackle a lot, it may not be able to tackle everything. We want to make sure we have the right tool for the right job. If you come to me with an mRNA vaccine, my first question is “what value is mRNA adding?” You, as a company, should justify why this enables us to do something we couldn’t with other platforms. You need to convey that value proposition.

"If you have a new administration technology, it needs to be really, really good for us to choose to change all of our processes to incorporate this new technology."

What technologies in the vaccine delivery space excite you? 

There are a lot. For example, combination approaches, while not specific to vaccines, are extremely interesting. Another could be targeted delivery of vaccines to a specific area that will potentially let us reduce the dose or induce a specific tunable immune response based on where you target.

 

Are you seeing innovation in the stabilization or transportation of vaccines?

During the pandemic, mRNA was crucial. You didn't have issues with unused vaccines because we all wanted to be protected. If a clinic receives a pack of 72, I'm sure that all 72 were used pretty quickly and you didn't have long-term storage issues. Lack optimization for long-term shelf storage wasn’t a critical constraint.

This is why GSK exploits multiple different technologies. We don’t have to rely solely on mRNA, and we can even explore combinations. We can move to monoclonals or proteins, like for Arexvy, which is a relatively stable adjuvanted protein vaccine.  Shingrix is another stable adjuvanted protein vaccine from GSK. Working with multiple platforms helps you get around some of these issues. 

When you have some kind of emergency, you accept a tradeoff of rapid development over stability. In that case, we see a lot of really interesting things with excipients, sequence optimization, and delivery vehicles coming through that will allow us to have longer stability in general of whatever these vaccines are. 

 
Can you tell us about the relocation of GSK's R&D site? 

GSK has multiple R&D sites across the world. Our Center for Vaccines Research is currently in Rockville, Maryland, and while we’ve really appreciated our time here, we will be relocating our Vaccines R&D and Infectious Disease teams, primarily focused on mRNA, structural biology, and viral vaccines to Cambridge, Massachusetts to join four sites we already have in the Greater Boston-area. In 2020, GSK acquired TESARO, in Waltham. In 2022, we acquired Affinivax on Binney Street in Kendall Square. We also have a site at Tech Square a couple of blocks away from Binney Street. The expansion of our site at Cambridge Park Drive gives us an opportunity to bring together our talented teams to create globally leading capabilities and cutting-edge technologies with additional state-of-the-art lab space in Cambridge. 

It’s amazing how much innovation is happening in Cambridge, and you can’t really beat the expertise and number of companies within that region. We are expanding what GSK already has there with a larger focus on viral vaccines, mRNA and structural biology to go with our protein chemistry expertise at the Binney Street site. In 2025, we are going to have a lot of open positions to fill to build the capabilities we’d like to have there.  

We're working closely with the scientific leadership in the Massachusetts area to promote our move and make sure that there is some excitement and make sure people know that we're there. I truly believe that growing our footprint here is important,  because of how much expertise is there and because of the opportunities that are in Boston. For anyone reading this, please go to GSKBoston.com because there are a lot of open positions. You can learn more about the research that's going on there, and we'll be hiring a lot throughout 2025.

 

How do you see the vaccine delivery world evolving in the next 3-5 years?  

We can definitely see more AI being more essential, with more GPT and large language models being applied and I don’t think you would have been able to say that 3-5 years ago. That’s exciting because it happened like a light switch, one second it was an idea and the next it was a reality. GSK is already taking advantage of these technologies for future development.

One of the areas that GSK really excels at is our access to medicine and our global health. We've placed in the top two for access to medicine index for the last nine years and GSK has a very large global health impact, reaching over 1.3 billion individuals in lower- and middle-income countries. The GSK Vaccines Institute for Global Health is solely focused on diseases and viruses that impact these individuals. They were the ones to come out with Mosquirix, the malaria vaccine, that is saving millions of lives and supported development of the typhoid vaccine TyphiBev. They are mainly focused on enteric viruses and bacteria. Addressing these pathogens in these environments come with a number of additional delivery and stability issues. I’m hopeful we’ll see advancements to impact health here in the near future.

Finally, being able to really take advantage of the full toolbox of technologies will be an exciting evolution. Developing scientific rationale for when to use mRNA, protein, vectors or other technologies, appreciating the strengths and challenges of each platform will greatly accelerate timelines and efficacy of vaccines.

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