BRIEF —GSK lures Pfizer exec to head its vaccines R&D

UK pharma major GlaxoSmithKline today announced that Dr Phil Dormitzer will join the company as global head of vaccines R&D on December 3, 2021.

Dr Dormitzer will report to Dr Hal Barron, chief scientific officer and president R&D, and join GSK’s R&D leadership team, and the vaccines leadership team. He will be based in Greater Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

Dr Dormitzer joins from Pfizer, where he was vice president and chief scientific officer, RNA and Viral Vaccines. In this role, he was responsible for the viral vaccines R&D portfolio, which included the company’s maternal and older adult respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine candidates (based on their stabilized prefusion F-based technology), which are now in Phase III clinical trials.

He was also responsible for Pfizer’s RNA-based influenza vaccine candidate, being developed in collaboration with BioNTech SE.

He provided Pfizer scientific leadership for the development of Comirnaty, the RNA-based Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

Prior to this, Dr Dormitzer held roles of increasing responsibility with Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, including leading the research component of the company’s response to the H1N1 influenza pandemic that supported the development of three licensed vaccines and latterly as Head of US Vaccines Research.

Commenting on the appointment, Dr Barron said: “I am delighted to have Phil, a renowned vaccinologist and scientific leader, join GSK. The importance of vaccines has never been clearer, and the pace of technological innovation has rarely been greater. GSK has an industry-leading pipeline of vaccines and Phil’s scientific expertise and significant experience with key innovative technologies, such as mRNA, structure-based antigen design and synthetic biology, will be key to ensuring we remain a leader in this field.”