Glaxo turns to auto company for research ideas

GlaxoSmithKline had to play a serious game of catch-up in its quest to develop a new vaccine for cervical cancer. Four years ago, Glaxo's vaccines division--GSK Bio--concluded that it was two years behind Merck's program for an HPV vaccine. In order to bridge that yawning gap, researchers at the company adopted a new approach developed by automaker Renault called the "one roof" approach. The company plucked a variety of experts it needed from different fields and put them together under one roof to push a crash vaccine project. Before "one roof," 80 percent of the people working on the vaccine spent 20 percent of their time on the project. That's a traditional development approach that helps contribute to a development process that can easily last 10 years. As a result of the new strategy, GSK Bio cut its timeline to an application in Europe by two years while trimming 18 months off of its FDA schedule. And it accelerated a program that is expected to deliver up to one third of the U.K. company's revenue over the next five years.

- read this article on the research program from BusinessWeek

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