BRITAIN’s largest drugs group, Glaxo Smith Kline, will this week announce that it could be ready to produce millions of doses of flu vaccine within four months of the declaration of a pandemic.

The announcement of a pandemic, which would have to be made by the World Health Organisation (WHO), would allow Glaxo and other vaccine manufacturers to short-circuit the normal testing and safety procedures applied to new medicines. This exceptional step would only be taken to counter the greater risk posed by the spread of the disease.

Concern in Britain over the threat from avian flu was further heightened on Friday when a quarantined parrot was found to have a strain of the disease. The H5NI variant has killed about 60 people in Asia.

Glaxo, and its chief executive, Jean-Pierre Garnier, will come under pressure to set out the company’s response to the danger when it reports its third-quarter results on Thursday.

The group recently invested $2 billion (£1.13 billion) to expand its vaccine manufacturing capacity, and is buying ID Biomedical, a Canadian supplier.

Once the WHO has declared a pandemic, Glaxo believes it would take up to a month to synthesise the strain of virus needed to develop a vaccine. It would take a further three or four months to make the vaccine available.

Like Roche, the Swiss drugs giant, Glaxo makes a drug that could be useful in treating bird flu. However, the British company faces more challenges in stepping up production of Relenza, which had sales of only £3m last year. This is partly because it is an inhaled medicine, making it harder to license out the manufacturing to other companies.

Separately next week, Glaxo is expected to announce a research and development (R&D) day to give investors an update on promising future products. The news will be taken as a further sign that the company’s pipeline of new medicines is continuing to strengthen.

The R&D day will take place before the end of the year. It is thought that the briefing will either cover its anti-infective development programme, which includes possible treatments for HIV and malaria, or its cancer products.

The more advanced cancer candidates include treatments for breast, ovarian and small-cell lung cancer. The company also has a very promising vaccine called Cervarix for the prevention of cervical cancer. Cervarix is a rival to Gardasil, the Merck vaccine that made front-page headlines when it was found to offer 100% protection against the disease.

It is thought that Glaxo may be able to report some similarly compelling data.

The group endured a difficult few years after it was formed by the merger in 2000 of Glaxo Wellcome and Smith Kline Beecham. A restructured R&D organisation is finally showing signs of bearing fruit. This has contributed to a 30% rise in its share price over the past year, to £14.18 on Friday.

Glaxo is expected to report strong third-quarter results, with analysts expecting a 12% increase in earnings.

Astra Zeneca, the other big UK-based drugs group, will also report third-quarter earnings on Wednesday.

City analysts are looking for it to reveal operating profits of $1.64 billion on sales of $5.85 billion.

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