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LONDON (Alliance News) - GlaxoSmithKline PLC Thursday announced a new research collaboration with the European Bioinformatics Institute and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, to harness 'big data' and genome sequencing to improve the success rate for discovering new medicines.
The three will establish the Centre for Therapeutic Target Validation, with the aim of helping researchers in the first step in exploring new medicines. The Centre will be based on the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus near Cambridge.
Glaxo said that around 90% of compounds that enter clinical trials fail to demonstrate the necessary efficacy and safety requirements, and never become medicines. It believes this is because the biological target for these drugs is not well understood, and hopes to help clearly define this aim before the drug is developed.
Scientists from the Sanger Institute will contribute, and EMBL-EDI will provide insights on the data and use its capabilities to integrate streams of different varieties of experimental data. Glaxo will contribute its expertise in disease biology, translation medicine and drug discovery, it said.
The data gathered within the centre will be shared amongst the scientific community following quality control checks; it will also publish data and information arising from its projects in scientific journals. When the centre is fully established it will look to bring in other companies and academic institutions into the centre to expand its activities.
"By changing our business model, taking a more open-minded approach to sharing information and forging collaborations like the Centre for Therapeutic Target Validation, we believe there is an opportunity to accelerate the development of innovative new medicines," President of Pharmaceuticals research and development Patrick Vallance said in a statement.
â??The UK leads the fields of genome sequencing and bioinformatics and I am delighted that GSK has the opportunity to collaborate with two of its premier research institutions,â? added Vallance.
Shares in Glaxo last traded at 1,623.5 pence per share.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; hanassmith@alliancenews.com; @HanaSSAllNews
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