The company’s portfolio has grown from 8 to 17 candidates.

In the last year, GlaxoSmithKline has acquired Tesaro for $5.1 billion and purchased a $300 million stake in Merck KGaA’s cancer candidate M7824. The company’s own R&D team has also been active. The result: its pipeline of oncology drugs has expanded from eight (all early phase except 1) in 2018 to 17 at the present. Chief Science Officer Hal Barron notes that many of these candidates may be effective as monotherapies and in various combinations.

Results for several trials currently underway are expected by the end of 2019. Examples include its anti-BCMA drug belantamab mafodotin, anti-PD-1 antibody dostarlimab, protein arginine methyltransferase 5 inhibitor GSK3326595 and BET inhibitor GSK525762.

GSK has also established a partnership with 23andMe through which six targets have been identified for joint development.