Glaxo and Pfizer Create New HIV Drug Company
Jacksonville, Thursday, April 16, 2009 – Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) are joining together in a joint venture to focus on marketed development, and discovery of HIV drugs. This new company is designed to discover and advance therapies for this deadly virus.
Pfizer will own 15 percent of the company, while Glaxo will own the difference of 85 percent. The new company is going to also be contracting with R&D to research 6 experimental drugs that are to treat HIV/AIDS. Glaxo and Pfizer will have eleven marketed drugs that brought in around $2 billion dollars last year. By combining in this joint venture both companies believe that there is a better chance at discovering new therapies in combining different drugs to achieve new and advanced treatment for HIV/AIDS patients.
This joint venture will expand Glaxo’s portfolio and allows access to a range of new pipeline assets. Pfizer will provide its pipeline of assest and with the access to Glaxo’s HIV commercial orgainzation and distribution network. This company is meant to help both Glaxo and Pfizer with some of the problems they are facing. Glaxo is one of the biggest sellers of HIV drugs. They products they sell are old and isn’t growing quickly. Glaxo’s pipeline is weak in the development of HIV drugs, while Pfizer is working on a bunch of newly developed HIV drugs, but just don’t have the wide range of global marketing to sell the products like Glaxo.
Eleven marketed products will start the new company off and six medications are in the firm’s pipeline. Four of them are in development of Phase 2. There will be 17 molecules altogether to be developed in a comgination of one another to discover new HIV treatments. With the companies existing products and Pfizer’s pipeline, and Glaxo’s capabilities of global dstribution, this new company is in a great postion to discover new and improved medical drugs to the patients efficiently and quickly, according to Chief Executive Officer Jeff Kindler.
According to GSK chief executive Andrew Witty the agreement marks a “definitive step” to deliver more medicines, more efficiently.
“At the core of this specialist business is a broad portfolio of products and pipeline assets, which can be more effectively leveraged through the new company’s strong revenue base and dedicated research capability,” he said.
“HIV remains a global threat with increasing incidence and viral resistance. This new company will be better placed to meet these challenges and improve access to treatments.”
The future holds what this company can discover to help all those people living out there with HIV.
