Research and development approach

R&D is the core of our innovation

In 2023, our R&D expenditure was £6.2 billion, up 13% AER and 14% CER on 2022, driven by investment across the portfolio.

The convergence of science and technology is changing discovery and development, allowing us to make advances once thought impossible. We have built one of the world’s largest genetic datasets, giving us an unprecedented level of understanding of the human immune system and end-to-end insight into the underlying biology of disease. This gives us a transformative opportunity to predict and pre-empt disease and propel all aspects of R&D, reflected in our broad pipeline.

We have bolstered our pipeline and technology capabilities through strategic business development, actively seeking out new, differentiated opportunities in diseases with high patient need. We have approximately 71 medicines and vaccines in development, further strengthening our position as a pioneer in the field of healthcare innovation.

Our world-leading capabilities in vaccines and medicines development are driven by our commitment to making a significant and meaningful impact on patients' lives. We strive to deliver innovative solutions by combining scientific potential, addressing unmet patient needs, and considering commercial value. We are committed to developing treatments that make a real difference and create value for patients and shareholders.

Our priorities in R&D are:

• execution: to accelerate our pipeline, including with business development, to deliver innovative vaccines and medicines
• technology: to deliver more innovation, better and faster, using new data and platform technologies that speed discovery and development and improve the chance of success
• culture: to create an agile, innovative environment that’s ambitious for patients and attracts the best people, scientists and partners.

We prioritise research into new vaccines and specialty medicines, that can prevent and change the course of disease. We focus on four core therapeutic areas: infectious diseases, HIV, respiratory/immunology and oncology. These are areas where significant patient need remains and where we have the strongest expertise and greatest confidence in our ability to deliver differentiated and needed medicines and vaccines at scale.

We continue to strengthen our pipeline of vaccines and medicines, applying our growing expertise and partnerships in data and technology to increase the productivity of our R&D.