A GSK history leading to 900 cut positions

View Photos

Matthew Lloyd

In 1969, Glaxo launches Ventolin as a treatment for asthma, marketed under the Allen & Hanburys name.

15 photos

Home of the Day

Sponsor Listing

Jason deBruyn

Staff Writer- Triangle Business Journal

Email  |  Twitter

Drug giant GlaxoSmithKline will lay off 900 Research Triangle Park workers in research and development, roughly half of which will be offered positions with a sub-unit of contract research organization Parexel, and consolidate North American R&D operations in Philadelphia.

Read: Is the Triangle pharma industry well positioned to absorb 900 GSK layoffs?

The drug company has a long history, however, one that includes several mergers and acquisitions. Below is a brief history on how the company started, and click the slides to the right to see major events in the company's history here in the Triangle.

Slideshow: GSK timeline leading to 900 layoffs

In 1873 Joseph Nathan, who left the United Kingdom to seek new business opportunities 20 years before, established a general trading company at Wellington in New Zealand named Joseph Nathan and Co that sold baby formula under the name "Defiance." This is the foundation for the Glaxo company to be formed later.

Poll: Will the Triangle's pharma reputation take a hit in the wake of GlaxoSmithKline's RTP layoffs?

The Nathan directors realized that selling dried milk as an infant food called for a more appealing name than Defiance. They settled on Lacto, but this was not acceptable because similar names were already registered. By adding and changing letters, the name Glaxo evolved and was registered in October 1906.

In 1880, Burroughs Wellcome & Company is established in London by American pharmacists Henry Wellcome and Silas Burroughs, four years after Joseph Nathan opened a London office. "Tabloid" is registered as a Burroughs Wellcome trademark to describe its compressed tablets. By 1898, the word was being used generally to describe a compressed or concentrated dose of anything. Hence the term 'tabloid journalism', which first appears in written records in 1901.

Jason deBruyn covers The Biopharmaceutical and Health Care industries. Follow him on Twitter @jasondebruyn.