GSK plc, formerly GlaxoSmithKline plc, is a British-American multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with global headquarters in London, England. GSK was established in 2000 by a merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham. GSK is the tenth largest pharmaceutical company and #294 on the 2022 Fortune Global 500, ranked behind other pharmaceutical companies China Resources, Sinopharm, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Roche, AbbVie, Novartis, Bayer, and Merck.
The company has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. As of August 2022, it had a market capitalization of £70 billion, the eighth largest on the London Stock Exchange. It has a secondary listing on the New York Stock Exchange.
The company developed the first malaria vaccine, RTS, S, which it said in 2014 it would make available for five percent above cost. Legacy products developed at GSK include several listed in the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines, such as amoxicillin, mercaptopurine, pyrimethamine, and zidovudine.
The RTS, S vaccine was conceived of and created in the late 1980s by scientists working at SmithKline Beecham Biologicals (now GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Vaccines) laboratories in Belgium. The vaccine was further developed through a collaboration between GSK and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in the U.S. state of Maryland and has been funded in part by the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Its efficacy ranges from 26 to 50% in infants and young children.
In July 2015, the vaccine received a positive scientific opinion from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for use outside the European Union, it is the world’s first licensed malaria vaccine and also the first vaccine licensed for use against a human parasitic disease of any kind. On 23 October 2015, WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) and the Malaria Policy Advisory Committee (MPAC) jointly recommended a pilot implementation of the vaccine in Africa. This pilot project for vaccination was launched on 23 April 2019 in Malawi, on 30 April 2019 in Ghana, and on 13 September 2019 in Kenya.
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