GlaxoSmithKline

GSK's 2024 performance—7% revenue growth, 13% core profit growth, 71 medicines in clinical development—masks a deeper strategic challenge: vaccine sales declined 4% in 2024 and face "low single digit" decline projected for 2025. The company's Arexvy RSV vaccine collapsed 51% while Shingrix grew only 1%, squeezed between political pressure on vaccination policy and China's macroeconomic slowdown. This is frequency-dependent selection turning hostile: when anti-vaccine sentiment rises and government recommendations weaken, vaccine makers face environmental pressure independent of product quality.

The company's response demonstrates portfolio effect insurance: oncology, respiratory, and cardiovascular growth (all double-digit) compensate for vaccine vulnerability. GSK is hedging against single-niche dependence through functional complementarity—different therapeutic areas respond to different selective pressures. The $1.1 billion spent on share buybacks through Q3 2025 signals confidence that specialty medicines momentum (19 Phase III programs, 13 positive readouts in 2024) will overcome vaccine headwinds. This is resource reallocation from mature franchises to high-growth opportunities.

GSK's acquisition strategy—IDRx (GI cancers), Aiolos Bio (asthma), Elsie Biotechnologies (oligonucleotides), Empirico (respiratory)—follows horizontal gene transfer logic: buy companies that solved specific technical problems, integrate their IP into GSK's clinical and commercial infrastructure. The Flagship Pioneering partnership adds another mechanism: access to platform technologies (stem cells, immune engineering) that would take years to develop internally. By 2031, GSK projects $40+ billion revenue from 14 medicines launching 2025-2031, each with $2+ billion peak sales potential. That's concentration risk if execution fails, but adaptive radiation if it succeeds—speciation across therapeutic areas using shared technology platforms.