GSK CEO Walm­s­ley is re­or­ga­niz­ing R&D, drop­ping drugs and adding a new fo­cus on can­cer re­search

Just days af­ter rush­ing Dana-Far­ber chief Lau­rie Glim­ch­er on­to the board at Glax­o­SmithK­line $GSK, new CEO Em­ma Walm­s­ley is mak­ing her move to re­or­ga­nize the pipeline. Her plan calls for a ma­jor R&D cull, drop­ping 30 de­vel­op­ment projects and adding can­cer and im­muno-in­flam­ma­to­ry dis­eases to its list of top R&D pri­or­i­ties — which will con­sume the li­on’s share of its bud­get.

In a state­ment out ear­ly Wednes­day, GSK out­lined plans to part­ner out or sim­ply drop 30 pre­clin­i­cal and clin­i­cal pro­grams, stream­lin­ing R&D and oth­er op­er­a­tions in the glob­al op­er­a­tion as the com­pa­ny looks for about $1.3 bil­lion in sav­ings by 2020. Rare dis­ease drugs in par­tic­u­lar ap­pear to be on the chop­ping block while a list of as­sets that are be­ing dropped from the pipeline in­cludes sirukum­ab, its dis­ap­point­ing rheuma­toid arthri­tis drug now un­der reg­u­la­to­ry re­view and part­nered with J&J $JNJ.

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