Dolutegravir Sodium/Lamivudine

GSK has debuted a new cost-cutting plan to drive mid-to-long-term growth alongside its Q2 results. Credit: 1take1shot / Shutterstock.com. Amid a Q2 results debut, GSK has also announced a new cost-cutting and UK R&D strategy as recently appointed CEO, Luke Miels, looks to balance the impact of key drug patent expiries and steer the company towards further growth. Through its new approach, the British pharma giant is hoping to save £1.9bn ($2.5bn) between now and 2029 – a majority of which Miels says will be reallocated to bolstering and accelerating its pipeline through dealmaking, regular portfolio reviews and the acceleration of late-stage R&D programmes to lay the foundations for the company’s mid-to-long-term growth. While GSK’s initiative will involve sweeping job cuts, the company has divulged little detail on who or how many may be impacted. GSK debuts this plan as the patent expiry for its big seller, dolutegravir looms closer, with the drug set to lose market exclusivity between 2028 and 2030 in key markets. In Q2 2026 alone, dolutegravir products were one of GSK’s biggest revenue streams, pulling in £1.4bn in total sales across its several combinations  – primarily through Dovato (dolutegravir/lamivudine), which generated £749m during the quarter. As the company moves into a new era, Miels highlighted GSK’s sharpened focus on speciality medicines, with oncology acting as a key driver of future growth . GSK is facilitating this shift towards oncology through several late-stage pipeline efforts, with 11 of the 20 Phase III studies set to initiate in 2026 being in oncology. This includes trials focused on Hansoh Pharma-licensed antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) risvutatug rezetecan (ris-rez) and mocertatug rezetecan (mo-rez) , as well as MSD and IDRx-developed tyrosine kinase inhibitor, velzatinib. In parallel, GSK will run several development programmes in the realm of respiratory disease, with the company planning to begin nine Phase III trials in 2026. This comes as GSK continues to reap the financial rewards of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD) therapy, Nucala (mepolizumab), which joined GSK’s top-selling list for Q2 by raking in £610m in sales. Zooming out to the broader picture, GSK achieved £8.4bn in total sales during Q2 – a value that was up 5% from the same period last year, above analyst expectations, and primarily driven by the 14% increase in speciality medicine sales to £3.8bn. GSK makes the move to Cambridge To further its overall development strategy, GSK is also looking to nestle itself amongst academic, healthcare and biotech players in the key UK hub of Cambridge, with the company opting to shutter operations in Stevenage in favour of a £400m flagship R&D centre within the city’s Biomedical Campus. This new tech-enabled facility, once complete, will be the epicentre of GSK’s UK R&D operations, and will house more than 1,000 scientists. According to GSK’s CSO, Tony Wood, Cambridge is home to one of the “world’s best life sciences ecosystems”, and the Cambridge Biomedical Campus will provide the company with “exceptional opportunities for collaboration”. “With our existing connections and experience, we see this move as a catalyst for faster, bolder medicines discovery by accelerating the science that matters most for GSK’s next wave of medicines,” Wood commented. This investment into UK R&D will be a positive step forward for the British life sciences sector, which is currently looking to win the favour of companies through several government-led initiatives focused on making the UK a one-stop shop for innovation and commercial life sciences activity. These plans appear to be showing early signs of benefit, as the UK government recently announced that the British life sciences sector attracted more than £3bn in new public-private investment in 12 months following the debut of the Life Sciences Sector Plan .

GSK has unveiled an ambitious three-year plan to divert resources to its late-stage R&D programs and shift its research headquarters—but CEO Luke Miels is being tight-lipped about the extent of any job losses. The strategy will aim to generate annual savings of 1.9 billion pounds ($2.5 billion) by 2029, set against a one-time cost of 2.4 billion pounds ($3.2 billion). About 45% of the required savings will come from “better procurement,” Miels told journalists on a second-quarter earnings call this morning. This would focus on “areas that are not on the frontline of our labs,” such as “all sorts of systems and consultants and various other partners [and] support functions.” Another 40% of the savings will come from the “evolving portfolio,” namely “reallocating resources from our mature portfolio of mature products to specialty, novel products.” However, Miels wasn’t willing to put a figure on the number of job losses that this restructuring could entail. “We're not going to give a number today in terms of people changes, and that's because I want the chance, and I want my team to have the chance, to discuss this with our people first,” the CEO said on the call. “I think the key theme, as I've said, is it's about reallocation into new medicines,” he added. “But we will update you in time once we've implemented those plans.” GSK put the strategy in the context of the looming patent expiry for its dolutegravir range of HIV meds, which begins in 2028. Those treatments, which include Dovato and Tivicay, brought in a combined total of 1.4 billion pounds ($1.9 billion) in the second quarter. Most of the savings will be reinvested into the late-stage pipeline, Miels explained. This includes antibody-drug conjugates like the Hansoh Pharmaceutical-partnered ris-rez—which scored a phase 3 win today —as well as the ALK inhibitor neladalkib for colon cancer and the FGF21 analog efimosfermin alfa for fatty liver disease. Part of the savings will also be used to move GSK’s research headquarters from the English town of Stevenage, about 30 miles away, to Cambridge. As well as being an academic center and one point of England’s life sciences “golden triangle,” Cambridge is already home to the other U.K.-based Big Pharma, AstraZeneca. In fact, GSK’s new R&D site will be built on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, which already houses AstraZeneca’s Discovery Center. “This is a 400-million-pound investment—on top of the 1.5 [billion] we spend each year in the U.K.—to further integrate GSK into Cambridge's world-class ecosystem of biomedical research, patient care and academia,” Miels said on the call. GSK’s headquarters in London will be unaffected by the move, the company pointed out, although Chief Scientific Officer Tony Wood will be based at the Cambridge site. Miels told journalists that moving R&D “up the road” to Cambridge was an example of the company “putting our money where our mouth is” and proving its commitment to the U.K. life sciences industry. The CEO, who stepped up to the top job at the start of the year, has already made his mark on GSK with an M&A strategy focused of trying to outdo established blockbusters. This approach has encompassed the $2.2 billion buyout of Rapt Therapeutics for a food allergy reaction drug that targets the same epitope as Novartis and Roche’s Xolair, as well as paying $950 million cash for Canadian biotech 35Pharma and its potential rival to Merck & Co.’s pulmonary hypertension mainstay Winrevair. Miels said on this morning’s call that he and his team have undertaken a “full portfolio review” over the last six months “looking really across the board for opportunities to accelerate and broaden our development.” “This review involving the team identified opportunities to accelerate development across 18 indications and 25 studies for seven key assets in oncology, respiratory, hepatology and vaccines,” he explained. One drug that was recently scrapped was camlipixant. Once hailed as a potential blockbuster, GSK ended development in chronic cough earlier this month due to a mixed phase 3 readout. GSK revealed this morning that the decision came with a 1.3 billion pound ($1.7 billion) financial hit for the company, which it blamed for a 75% drop in operating profits for the quarter.