GlaxoSmithKline is establishing a new global center for vaccines R&D in Rockville, Md. The site will become one of three global vaccines R&D centers for GSK, complementing the company’s existing global R&D center in Rixensart, Belgium and in Siena, Italy, a site GSK acquired from Novartis last month.

The new center will expand GSK’s efforts to discover and develop novel vaccines across a range of pressing public health threats, including those relevant to the U.S. It will consolidate vaccines R&D activities currently conducted at other GSK sites, including in Philadelphia and Cambridge, Mass., into one centralized location. Key late stage development programs, as well as vaccine discovery and new platform technology development, will be led from Rockville.

The Rockville site, acquired by GSK in 2012, offers proximity to vaccines collaborators and key public health stakeholders. GSK anticipates site operations for vaccines to begin in Rockville as early as September.

This move follows GSK’s acquisition of Novartis’ vaccines business as part of the companies’ major three-part transaction that closed in March. GSK’s and Novartis’ vaccines R&D organizations are highly complementary, bringing together respective experience in virology and bacterial infection.