GlaxoSmithKline provides funding to found new pharmaceutical chair

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has revealed it has donated three million euros (2.06 million pounds) to found a new chair in corporate innovation at INSEAD, an international business school.

The UK’s largest drugs manufacturer said the grant was given to help spread the innovative methodology in which GSK conducts its business. The new chair will focus on three areas between the business school and GSK.

The first area will focus on the innovation of new drugs and reconciling creativity with large-scale industrial screening of molecules. Secondly, the school and GSK will collaborate on enhancing management of experimentation in clinical development. Finally, they will analyse approaches for the marketing of new drugs in areas as commercially fragmented as Europe.

Jean-Pierre Garnier, GSK’s chief executive officer, remarked: “Embracing new thinking from bodies such as INSEAD challenges our approach and stimulates the entrepreneurial spirit we have worked so hard to foster.”

“Innovation is at the heart of GlaxoSmithKline and is responsible for our ever strengthening new product pipeline. This endowment is an illustration of our commitment to furthering this way of working,” he added.

Last year GSK opened the Centre of Excellence for External Drug Discovery, which has the “ultimate objective” of exploiting the full potential of research and development assets through partnerships with biotech companies, small- and mid-sized pharmaceutical companies, as well as academic institutions.

GSK claims to have “a flair for research” and spends over 300,000 pounds every hour on research and development. It also says that 1,100 prescriptions are written every minute for a GSK product and 35 vaccines are distributed every second.

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