GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has made a long-term investment in its vaccines business by acquiring the Swiss company Okairos, which was spun out from Merck & Co. in 2007, for €250 M (US$323 M) in cash. With the acquisition, GSK will gain full ownership of Okairos’ next-generation vaccine technology platform and its pipeline of T-cell-based vaccines for infectious diseases for which there are currently no effective prophylactic or therapeutic vaccines, including respiratory syncytial virus, hepatitis C virus, malaria, tuberculosis, Ebola and HIV. The company’s technology is based on novel replication-incompetent adenoviral vectors derived from chimpanzee strains.