GSK welcomes outside researchers to its ‘open lab’
pharmafile | June 29, 2011 | News story | Research and Development | GSK, TB, academic alliance, malaria, open lab
The first scientists from outside GlaxoSmithKline have started work at the manufacturer’s ‘open lab’ for diseases of the developing world near Madrid.
GSK announced 18 months ago that it was to make facilities at its Tres Cantos research campus available to other bodies in a bid to accelerate research for new medicines for illnesses such as malaria and drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB).
Eight scientists from six research organisations, including Imperial College London and Durham University, are now engaged in their own work at Tres Cantos alongside 120 GSK scientists.
The Durham project is looking for compounds that can inhibit a new target in kinetoplastid protozoan parasites.
The Imperial research is on identifying CDPK (calcium dependent protein kinase) inhibitors from compounds identified by GSK as inhibiting growth of the malaria parasite P. falciparum.
“The challenge of improving healthcare in the developing world is enormous and far too complex to be addressed by any one group or organisation alone,” said Nick Cammack, head of the Tres Cantos facility.
“Success will require creative thinking and the identification of new ways for industry, academia, NGOs and governments to work together,” he added.
Half of this first wave of projects is supported by the Tres Cantos Open Lab Foundation, a non-profit group established with a £5 million donation from GSK.
“This is an innovative model for research collaboration, with the potential for transformative outcomes for medicine in the developing world,” said Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, chair of the foundation’s governing board.
The campus is also supporting researchers from US-based Weill Cornell Medical College who are working on a two-year project to find compounds to affect both drug-sensitive, multidrug- and extensively drug-resistant TB (MDR, XDR) in the non-replicating phase.
Two other TB projects – by iThemba Pharmaceuticals also looking at MDR and XDR TB, plus co-infection with HIV-AIDS, and by Spain’s CICbioGUNE, which is also looking at P. falciparum – are ongoing.
Finally, work by CRESIB, the Barcelona Centre for International Health Research, is in hand to create a continuous lab-based supply of the P. vivax malaria parasite in the blood stage.
If this is successful, the project could offer a technology breakthrough which would mean further advances in research on P. Vivax.
Adam Hill
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