The British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of its R&D centre in Tres Cantos (Madrid). When it opened 30 years ago it was a pioneering installation in its capacity as the first Spanish private research centre, and one of the first in the world to be dedicated exclusively to the research of new treatments for malaria and tuberculosis, two infectious diseases that basically affect developing countries, causing millions of deaths every year.

While the centre has now widened its range of research, its main focus is still on diseases that specifically affect developing countries. In March 2021, its biopharmaceutical R&D portfolio consisted in 30 potential treatments and 19 vaccine candidates. With an investment in 2020 of around 60.6 million euros, and supported by a clinical research unit and a third-party laboratory, the research centre accommodates 127 of the almost 2,000 employees the company has in Spain, if you include the headquarters in the same Madrid location and the production centres in Aranda de Duero (Burgos) and Alcalá de Henares (Madrid).

Clinical investigation
GSK’s accumulated investment in R&D in Spain in the last five years has been 260 million euros. In fact, our country is in the top three of the 150 where the company operates in terms of the volume of clinical research. This is one of the reasons why the Government of Spain has classified the company as excellent for 28 consecutive years within the Profarma Plan.

The Tres Cantos R&D centre is made up of pharmaceutical research units. Each of them operates self-sufficiently from the trial or screening phases to the concept test in phase 2, and they are supported by the operations unit. In addition to the original malaria and tuberculosis units, there is a third dedicated to illnesses caused by kinetoplastids (leishmaniasis, chagas disease and sleeping sickness).

Joint effort
The research work of these units takes places in collaboration with other institutions and research groups. In this regard, it is a joint effort among various agents, from international organisations who receive and manage the capital contributions to the pharmaceutical companies who, to varying degrees, contribute with their installations and experience to the development of pharmaceuticals. Academic research teams and other public centres, for their part, make a vital contribution to the basic science.

The Tres Cantos R&D centre’s open innovation model is based on three pillars. The first is a pool of patents that can be freely licensed to research these diseases, always within the framework of commercialisation in developing countries. The second is an open source license by means of which GSK shares its active molecules with the scientific community through publications in journals and public access databases.

Open laboratory
And third, the Madrid centre has an open laboratory with places for external researchers in its facilities. This is the raison d'être of the UK-based non-profit Tres Cantos Open Lab Foundation. Endowed with an initial fund of 6.7 million euros, the company is hoping that other institutions will join this programme with their contributions.

The foundation grants funding to public and private institutions worldwide to work in GSK’s Tres Cantos laboratories, provided that the projects are related to diseases that affect developing countries and GSK can help with their realisation.

^{Photo: GSK}