A senior GSK research executive said the company expects the number of oncology drug candidates in clinical trials to nearly double next year, highlighting how a string of acquisitions is rapidly filling its new drug pipeline.
The British pharmaceutical company's head of oncology research and development, Hesham Abdullah, said in an interview that the company is going all out to accelerate and return to the oncology drug race. "We currently have 5 approved oncology drugs, and that will likely become 6 in a few weeks. We have about 15 oncology assets in clinical stages, and we expect that scale to nearly double by 2027."
Shortly after new CEO Luke Miels took office, GSK placed a heavy bet on the oncology field. However, the company's oncology business revival had already begun during the tenure of former CEO Emma Walmsley. GSK first completed multiple acquisitions, and then brought in oncology therapies by connecting with the country's booming biomedical industry, including a licensing partnership with Hengrui Pharmaceuticals worth up to $12.5 billion.
After Miels took the helm, GSK acquired U.S. lung cancer drug company Nuvalent this year for $10.6 billion, and also brought in an investigational myeloma drug for up to $750 million. The Nuvalent acquisition is GSK's largest single acquisition in history, and also the largest deal the company has participated in since it completed an asset swap with Novartis worth more than $20 billion more than a decade ago and exited the oncology business.
After a series of acquisitions and licensing deals, GSK's oncology pipeline now covers blood cancers, lung cancer, gynecological cancers, gastrointestinal tumors, and prostate cancer; the drug types are diverse, including antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), immunotherapies that mobilize the immune system to kill tumors, and next-generation small molecule drugs.
Abdullah said: "Cancer incidence continues to rise across multiple patient populations. A core reason we chose to return to the oncology track is to meet enormous unmet clinical needs."
But analysts at RBC Capital Markets cautioned in a research note: although the oncology business has been designated a strategic priority, related products are not expected to contribute meaningful revenue until around the end of 2029; at the same time, GSK's flagship HIV business is about to face generic competition.
Abdullah joined GSK from AstraZeneca seven years ago, and has led oncology R&D since 2023, overseeing a revamp of the oncology pipeline strategy. He said that recruiting specialized talent from large pharmaceutical companies and leading biotechnology companies is crucial; deep coordination among R&D, medical affairs, and commercialization teams also helps rebuild the oncology unit.
Miels previously proposed that the company needs "scientific boldness" to accelerate pipeline progress. Abdullah gave examples in support: GSK has advanced some drug candidates directly from early research to late-stage clinical trials, and has also simultaneously launched multiple pivotal clinical trials for the same drug.
Among the products GSK is prioritizing for acceleration into late-stage development are two ADC drugs, mo-rez and ris-rez, licensed from Hansoh Pharmaceutical in 2023. GSK has already launched five late-stage clinical trials for mo-rez and two for ris-rez, and plans to add three more ris-rez clinical trials in the coming months.
Abdullah said that next year GSK may simultaneously conduct 19 to 20 late-stage oncology clinical studies. At the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) annual meeting held in Madrid, GSK announced the first batch of global clinical data for ris-rez in treating lung cancer. Abdullah said this data gave the company confidence that the trial results obtained by its partner are generalizable, consistent, and reproducible.
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