UK must reform drug pricing to become life sciences superpower, says GSK boss
GSK’s outgoing chief executive, Emma Walmsley, has said Britain will struggle to be a “life sciences superpower” unless it overhauls drug pricing.As ministers draw up proposals to increase the amount the NHS spends on new medicines by up to 25%, Walmsley said she was “hopeful and ambitious” that the standoff with the pharma industry could be resolved.According to the Academy of Medical Sciences, the government’s drug pricing announcement could come by the end of this week.Walmsley, who will hand over the top job to Luke Miels, currently GSK’s chief commercial officer, at the end of the year, said: “What everyone is putting their energy into, hopefully resolving, is how we make sure this country creates the right commercial environment.“Without that, it’s going to be very difficult to be able to be a leading life sciences superpower, which is what we want … and we are not going to secure something else we all want, which is patient access to innovation.
”A potential deal between industry and government is tied up with negotiations with Donald Trump’s administration over drug pricing, after the US president put pressure on companies to lower their prices – historically much higher than elsewhere – and invest in the US, or face trade tariffs.Walmsley noted that the NHS spends less than 10% of its budget on medicines, a lower figure than in the past.Her remarks came a day after the science minister, Patrick Vallance, said that “some degree of price increase is inevitable”.He told MPs on the science committee: “For brand new, innovative medicines it’s likely there will be some price increase.”A price rise will require additional funding for the NHS at a time when Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, faces tough decisions to balance the books, and is likely to breach Labour’s election promises not to raise one of the big three taxes of VAT, income tax and national insurance.
“We’ve discussed the fact that if there’s a rise in price for innovative medicines, that comes with a cost load, and that needs to be met,” Lord Vallance said.The NHS Confederation and NHS Providers, representing trusts and other health organisations, said this week that the cost of covering redundancies and strikes, along with paying more for medicines, was not included in the budget and would need extra cash from the chancellor.While GSK is investing $30bn in US manufacturing and research, Walmsley reaffirmed the company’s support of the UK’s life sciences strategy and its commitment to Britain.This is in contrast with other pharmaceutical groups that have scrapped or paused investments in the UK, including MSD, known as Merck in the US, and its British rival AstraZeneca.Sign up to Business TodayGet set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morningafter newsletter promotionGSK raised its 2025 sales and profit forecasts, driven by double-digit growth in respiratory, inflammation and immunology, oncology and HIV treatments.
Shares in GSK jumped by almost 6%, making it one of the biggest risers on the FTSE 100.The company reported a pre-tax profit of £2.5bn for the third quarter, compared with £64m a year earlier, which reflected the $2.2bn (about £1.7bn) settlement of US court cases over claims that its Zantac drug caused cancer.
GSK denies that the drug caused cancer.Vaccine sales rose by 2% to £2.7bn in the quarter to 30 September, mainly driven by sales outside the US.In the US, GSK reported a 15% drop in sales of its shingles vaccine, Shingrix.Vaccination rates in the US have slowed since Robert Kennedy Jr, an anti-vaxxer, became health secretary.
He has cut funding for research and ousted the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,Walmsley said: “We remain very cautious about the environment in the US,”
Alan Turing institute launches new mission to protect UK from cyber-attacks
Britain’s leading AI institute has announced a new mission to help protect the nation from cyber-attacks on infrastructure, including energy, transport and utilities, after it was embroiled in allegations of toxic work culture and the chief executive resigned amid ministerial pressure.The Alan Turing Institute will “carry out a programme of science and innovation designed to protect the UK from hostile threats”, it announced on Tuesday as part of changes following the resignation last month of Jean Innes, its chief executive, after a staff revolt and government calls for a strategic overhaul of the state-funded body.The mission comes amid growing concern over Britain’s vulnerability to internet outages and cyber-attacks after this month’s incident affecting Amazon’s cloud computing globally and recent cyber-attacks crippling production at Jaguar Land Rover factories, and supply chains at Marks & Spencer and the Co-op.Blythe Crawford, the former commander of the UK’s air and space warfare centre , will report back next month on how the government-funded institute “can best support the scale of government AI ambitions in defence, national security and intelligence”.The chair, former Amazon UK boss Doug Gurr, said 78 different research projects at the 440-staff institute have been closed, spun out or completed because they do not align with the new direction
Tech chiefs tell Trump to call off troops – will Firefox go ‘full AI’?
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, confounded by the ending of Bugonia and looking forward to seeing Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.In this week’s newsletter: the head of Firefox talks AI-integrated browsers; the tech billionaires’ support of Trump and their successful request to defer national guard deployment to San Francisco; and the growing prevalence of face-scanning in online dating. Thank you for reading.Do you need an assistant for your online activities?Multiple major players in artificial intelligence are moving on from chatbots like ChatGPT and are now focusing their efforts on new browsers with deep AI integrations
Amazon confirms plans to lay off 14,000 corporate workers as part of wave of cuts
Amazon has confirmed plans to lay off 14,000 corporate workers, as part of a wave of cuts expected to hit tens of thousands of jobs.The Seattle-based retail giant, which is vying to reverse a pandemic hiring spree, is attempting to cut costs and slim down its huge operation. This summer, its CEO warned white-collar employees their jobs could be taken by artificial intelligence.Beth Galetti, a senior vice-president at Amazon, wrote in a memo to employees on Tuesday: “The reductions we’re sharing today are a continuation of … work to get even stronger by further reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and shifting resources to ensure we’re investing in our biggest bets and what matters most to our customers’ current and future needs.”On Monday, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon was poised to cut as many as 30,000 corporate jobs, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, as it tries to undo the vast recruitment drive it embarked on at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, which unleashed an extraordinary – but fleeting – surge in demand for online shopping
Elon Musk launches encyclopedia ‘fact-checked’ by AI and aligning with rightwing views
Elon Musk has launched an online encyclopedia named Grokipedia that he said relied on artificial intelligence and would align more with his rightwing views than Wikipedia, though many of its articles say they are based on Wikipedia itself.Calling an AI encyclopedia “super important for civilization”, Musk had been planning the Wikipedia rival for at least a month. Grokipedia does not have human authors, unlike Wikipedia, which is written and edited by volunteers in a transparent process. Grokipedia said it is “fact-checked” by Grok, Musk’s AI chatbot.Musk said the idea was suggested by the Trump administration’s AI and cryptocurrency czar, David Sacks
‘A good moment in time for us’: Firefox head on AI browsers and what’s next for the web
Do you need an assistant for your online activities?Multiple major players in artificial intelligence are moving on from chatbots like ChatGPT and are now focusing their efforts on new browsers with deep AI integrations. Those could take the form of an agent that shops for you or an omnipresent chatbot that follows you around and summarizes what you’re seeing, looks up related stuff, or answers related questions.Last week alone, OpenAI released the ChatGPT Atlas browser, and Microsoft showed off Edge’s new Copilot Mode, both of which heavily feature chatbots. At the start of October, Perplexity made its Comet browser free. In mid-September, Google rolled out Chrome With Gemini, integrating its AI assistant with the most popular browser in the world
More than a million people every week show suicidal intent when chatting with ChatGPT, OpenAI estimates
More than a million ChatGPT users each week send messages that include “explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent”, according to a blogpost published by OpenAI on Monday. The finding, part of an update on how the chatbot handles sensitive conversations, is one of the most direct statements from the artificial intelligence giant on the scale of how AI can exacerbate mental health issues.In addition to its estimates on suicidal ideations and related interactions, OpenAI also said that about 0.07% of users active in a given week – about 560,000 of its touted 800m weekly users – show “possible signs of mental health emergencies related to psychosis or mania”. The post cautioned that these conversations were difficult to detect or measure, and that this was an initial analysis
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