Investors in Glaxosmithkline got two doses of good news yesterday. First, one of a trio of drugs that Emma Walmsley, the chief executive, prioritised when she took charge in April last year delivered encouraging results in a late-stage trial.
The Gemini trial was studying the combination of two drugs for HIV, dolutegravir and lamivudine, which Glaxo hopes will allow patients to cut the number of medicines they take from three or more and so reduce the side-effects they suffer.
Dolutegravir is potentially worth £5.2 billion in sales by 2022, according to consensus forecasts among analysts. It was part of Juluca, another two-drug treatment for HIV, the world’s first, approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in November and now on the market.
Both treatments