Funding boost for GSK open lab
pharmafile | May 7, 2013 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | GSK, Wellcome
GlaxoSmithKline has been given an extra £5 million by the Wellcome Trust to help support its work in Spain on finding new treatments for diseases of the developing world.
GSK opened its dedicated ‘open lab’ research facility in Tres Cantos, Madrid, more than three years ago with £5 million in seed funding – doubled last year to £10 million – as part of a commitment to greater openness in research.
The company’s data has been made available there for external researchers – 27 of them so far – to put into their own projects to identify prospective compounds alongside GSK’s scientists and taking advantage of the company’s facilities and pharma expertise.
The idea is to find novel means of treating dangerous conditions such as TB, malaria, Leishmaniasis – neglected diseases which involve complex science, represent a low return on investment and for which R&D is therefore sluggish.
“Academic researchers are making incredible progress in our understanding of neglected diseases yet we’ve still got a bottleneck when it comes to the development of new drugs,” explained Dr Richard Seabrook, head of business development at the Wellcome Trust.
Praising GSK’s ‘more collaborative approach’, he said the open lab “will see these advances reap the full benefit of the industry’s commercial expertise to give us the best chance of securing new treatments for these devastating diseases”.
The Wellcome money may help advance any of the 12 open lab projects active at present, as well as other work using the GSK malaria and TB compound collections which have been made freely available.
The mid-term focus is to develop two ‘high quality experimental’ drugs over the next five years, although the ultimate goal is to create a sustainable flow of ten such possibles going forward.
Results so far have been promising: for example, a researcher at NYU School of Medicine last year secured funding to carry out research in Chagas disease – in which longer-lasting, more tolerable treatments are needed – using the open lab’s specialist screening facilities.
“This support highlights a growing recognition that collaborative and open research is the key to tackling these devastating diseases,” said Dr Nick Cammack, head of GSK’s Tres Cantos Medicines Development Campus.
“We’ve hosted some of the world’s brightest academic scientists at Tres Cantos,” he went on. “The fusion of their academic excellence with GSK expertise has yielded some really exciting research projects.”
Adam Hill
Related Content
GSK’s Exdensur receives MHRA approval for asthma and rhinosinusitis
GSK’s Exdensur (depemokimab), a twice-yearly biological medicine, has received approval from the UK Medicines and …
Multiple myeloma treatment approved in Japan
GSK’s Blenrep (belantamab mafodotin) combinations have been approved by Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and …
Academy of Medical Sciences invests record £7.6m into early-career biomedical researchers
The Academy of Medical Sciences has awarded £7.6m to support 62 early-career biomedical researchers across …
