GlaxoSmithKline
and Google parent Alphabet’s life sciences unit are creating a new company
focused on fighting diseases by targeting electrical signals in the body,
jump-starting a novel field of medicine called bioelectronics. Verily Life
Sciences – known as Google’s life sciences unit until last year – and Britain’s
biggest drugmaker will together contribute 540 million pounds ($715 million)
over seven years to Galvani Bioelectronics, they said on Monday.
The
new company, owned 55 percent by GSK and 45 percent by Verily, will be based at
GSK’s Stevenage research center north of London, with a second research hub in
South San Francisco. It is GSK’s second notable investment in Britain since the
country voted to leave the European Union in June. Last week it announced plans
to spend 275 million pounds on drug manufacturing.
Kris
Famm, GSK’s head of bioelectronics research and president of Galvani, said the
first bioelectronic medicines using these implants to stimulate nerves could be
submitted for regulatory approval by around 2023. “We have had really promising
results in animal tests, where we’ve shown we can address some chronic diseases
with this mechanism, and now we are bringing that work into the clinic,” he
told Reuters.
“Our
goal is to have our first medicines ready for regulatory approval in seven
years.” GSK first unveiled its ambitions in bioelectronics in a paper in the
journal Nature three years ago and believes it is ahead of Big Pharma rivals in
developing medicines that use electrical impulses rather than traditional
chemicals or proteins.
Galvani,
however, is taking electrical interventions to the micro level, using tiny
implants to coax insulin from cells to treat diabetes, for example, or correct
muscle imbalances in lung diseases. Galvani will initially employ around 30
scientists, engineers and clinicians.
The
company will be chaired by Moncef Slaoui, GSK’s vaccines head, who pioneered
the drugmaker’s drive into the bioelectronics field. Slaoui is retiring from
GSK next March but will continue to steer Galvani after that date, a spokesman
said. Galvani will be fully consolidated in GSK’s financial statements,
following the model of the group’s majority-owned ViiV Healthcare business,
which sells HIV medicines.
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