GSK inks deal with Lonza, announces CFO's exit

LONDON Swiss drug maker Lonza will help British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline manufacture five biotech drugs in early- and mid-stage clinical trials, the two companies said Wednesday.

Lonza will manufacture clinical trial batches of the drugs, all monoclonal antibodies in phase-1 and phase-2 testing, and provide additional access to manufacturing capacity so GSK can fulfill future demands. The two companies said other details of the agreement remain confidential.

“We believe this is a critical step in the ongoing and future success of GSK in biopharmaceuticals,” GSK head of biopharmaceutical research and development Ian Tomlinson said.

Tomlinson said the company’s goal was to have a biopharmaceutical portfolio that consistently exceeded 20% of its research and development pipeline by 2015.

In other news, the company said that CFO and executive director Julian Heslop would retire at the end of March 2011. Goldman Sachs executive Simon Dingemans will be appointed CFO designate and executive director in January.