After missing vaccine glory in pandemic, GSK looks to dominate other diseases

BOSTON — GSK has been developing vaccines under one corporate guise or another for 140 years, ever since a rural Pennsylvania doctor started pumping smallpox shots out of a converted chicken house in 1882, but the company may be most known today for the vaccine it didn’t build.

The British pharma elected not to develop its own Covid shot. It missed out on the fame and fortune and Pfizer-hyping TikToks that came with curbing a once-in-a-century pandemic. In the process, it also faced its own internal dissension and an exodus of top talent.

It’s Phil Dormitzer’s job to change that. A key figure in Pfizer’s Covid vaccine effort, Dormitzer jumped to GSK in December 2021 to be global head of R&D for a division that developed more than 20 licensed vaccines, but seemed to be slipping behind new competitors with newer technologies.

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