Olympics to kick-start research ventures
pharmafile | August 1, 2012 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | GSK, London 2012, Olympics, research
London 2012 could provide a boost in the continuing search for personalised medicines for diabetes, heart disease and dementia as part of a plan to turn the Olympics’ dope-testing facilities to other uses after the games.
GlaxoSmithKline’s centre at Harlow in Essex is currently operated by King’s College London as a World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited laboratory to test competing athletes for banned substances.
In its new incarnation it will be funded to the tune of £10 million over five years, which comes equally from the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Department of Health’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).
The MRC-NIHR Phenome Centre, which the government says is the first of its kind in the world, will enable researchers to explore the characteristics of disease in order to develop new drugs and treatments for patients.
Much has been made of the legacy left by the Olympics, but the concentration has been on the future use of venues and the carrot of increased participation in sport by the public, particularly children.
However, the idea here is that the techniques used to test athletes for drugs could also be employed to identify new biomarkers which will explain why some patients are more susceptible to certain conditions.
Researchers will investigate patients’ and volunteers’ phenome patterns by analysing swiftly large numbers of samples of blood or urine.
“The GSK drug-testing facility at Harlow has taken one of the major challenges associated with this type of research – achieving high-throughput alongside forensic quality control – to a new level,” explained MRC chief executive Professor Sir John Savill.
“Rather than losing this investment once the Games are over, the collaboration – involving the MRC, NIHR, UK universities, the NHS and NIHR Biomedical Research Centres, and industry leaders in the field – will provide a unique resource that will ultimately result in benefits for patients. This is a phenomenal legacy from the Games,” he added.
Phenomes give a picture of a person’s molecular makeup, an ever-changing mixture influenced by genetics, diet, environment and even stress levels and which offers clues as to how someone responds to disease or to treatments.
Imperial College London will lead on the new venture with King’s College London, using magnetic resonance imaging equipment provided by Bruker and Waters Corporation.
“This research centre will transform our understanding of people’s physical characteristics and disease, and enable us to pull through these discoveries into real benefits for patients,” said chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies.
It has the potential to “revolutionise the way in which we treat a wide-range of diseases”, she added.
The new centre will be run by Professor Jeremy Nicholson, head of the Department of Surgery and Cancer at Imperial College, who said the centre would provide new ways of understanding the complex interactions between people’s genes and their environment that determine disease risks.
“Metabolic profiling will give us a new dimension of understanding about the factors that contribute to disease, as well as crucial information for predicting how individual patients are likely to respond to treatment,” he concluded.
Adam Hill
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