GSK’s global restructuring plan is likely to see “some limited impact” on roles in the Big Pharma’s home turf of the U.K., executives have confirmed.
In a third-quarter earnings call with journalists on Wednesday morning, GSK CEO Luke Miels explained that the U.K. layoffs would “mainly [concern] support functions in headquarters.”
“You never want headquarters to be too big,” Miels continued. “I want people at the bench in the lab, or out there talking to physicians, or on the line in the manufacturing environment—that's our priority there.”
“So, again, it's relatively limited in the U.K.,” the CEO added.
GSK moved its headquarters from Brentford in outer London into the heart of the city back in 2024. At the time of the move, 3,000 staffers were able to work through a hybrid model from the company’s new digs on New Oxford Street.
The restructuring forms part of GSK’s “accelerating growth” strategy that was first announced in July. At the time, Miels explained the pharma was seeking 1.9 billion pounds ($2.5 billion) in annual cost-savings by 2029 to fund the program.
The first big move in this global restructuring strategy came earlier this month, when GSK confirmed that up to 1,217 employees in Belgium are at risk of losing their jobs, spread across R&D, manufacturing and support functions. Belgium is home to three main sites for GSK’s vaccines business, and Fierce understands that part of the reason behind the layoffs is due to some over-capacity in GSK’s vaccine supply chain in the country.
On this morning’s call, Miels was tight-lipped about exactly which other parts of the business—or regions—would be impacted by the restructuring.
“We want to move resources to back late-stage assets,” the CEO explained. “These are the ones which ultimately, obviously, are most likely to end up in patients and have an impact.”
This drive to “reallocate[e] resources and capital to invest in the pipeline” had helped the Big Pharma to target the launch of 22 phase 3 starts by the end of 2026. This is “more than double” the 10 late-stage trial launches that the company had originally been aiming for at the start of the year, Miels noted.
They include a raft of late-stage trials for the Hansoh Pharma-partnered antibody-drug conjugates mo-rez and ris-rez, as well as six studies evaluating the Hengrui Pharmaceuticals-partnered respiratory disease therapy felcorekibart.
When the “accelerating growth” strategy was first unveiled in June, GSK also announced that it was moving its research headquarters from the English town of Stevenage about 30 miles down the road to Cambridge. GSK’s new R&D site will be built on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, which already houses AstraZeneca’s Discovery Center.
A close look through GSK's earnings presentation this morning confirmed that the company had dropped two candidates from its phase 1 pipeline. They included GSK5458514, a PSMAxCD3 T cell-engaging bispecific antibody that had been evaluated in prostate cancer. The study started last year and was originally expected to run through 2028, according to the federal trials database.
There was also VH4527079, an HIV entry inhibitor that had been developed by ViiV Healthcare. The phase 1 trial was terminated “for business reasons,” according to the database. GSK had previously declined to provide Fierce with more details about the decision.
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