GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is establishing a new global center for vaccines research and development (R&D) in Rockville, Maryland. The site will become one of three global vaccines R&D centers for GSK, complementing the company's existing global R&D centers in Rixensart, Belgium and in Siena, Italy, a site which GSK recently acquired from Novartis in March 2015.

The new US vaccines R&D center will expand GSK's efforts to discover and develop novel vaccines across a range of pressing public health threats, including those relevant to the US. It will consolidate vaccines R&D activities currently conducted at other GSK sites, including in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Cambridge, Massachusetts into one centralized location. Key late stage development programs as well as vaccine discovery and new platform technology development will be led from Rockville. The Rockville site, which was acquired by GSK in 2012, offers proximity to vaccines collaborators and key public health stakeholders. GSK anticipates site operations for vaccines to begin in Rockville as early as September 2015.

This move follows GSK's acquisition of Novartis' vaccines business as part of the companies' major three-part transaction that closed in March 2015. GSK and Novartis's vaccines R&D organizations are highly complementary, bringing together respective expertise in virology and bacterial infection.

Source: GlaxoSmithKline