Europe's biggest drug company, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), saw its share price fall last week, despite unveiling details of its “product pipeline” for the next five years.

GSK's chief executive, Jean-Pierre Garnier, told London market analysts: “There is no doubt that after 2006, GSK will outpace the rest of the industry.” But investors saw little prospect of immediate gain, with most of the new drugs years away from possible approval with regulatory hurdles still to overcome.

This week's newspapers suggested that GSK had shot itself in the foot when its vice president of genetic research, Allen Roses, told a scientific meeting in London that the “vast majority of drugs only work in …