GSK plans 'Open Lab' for campaign to defeat malaria, picks Emory as partner

Updated Jan. 20, 2010 at 2:57 p.m.

GSK plans 'Open Lab' for campaign to defeat malaria, picks Emory as partner

On The Web

Site Search

Get the latest news alerts: Follow LTW at Twitter.

Local Tech Wire

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – Drug giant GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK) is expanding its outreach efforts to encourage collaborative efforts in combating global diseases.

Andrew Witty, GSK’s top executive, is to deliver a speech in new York Wednesday at which he will announce GSK is opening up its malaria research labs in an attempt to battle the stubborn, deadly malady.

As many as 60 scientists from around the world will gain access to the “Open Lab” at a GSK facility in Spain.

(For complete text of Witty's speech, click here.)

GSK, which bases its U.S. headquarters in RTP and employs some 4,000 people in the area, also will boost initial research with a new foundation and $8 million in funding.

Witty also announced recently that GSK would provide access to proprietary information as part of a “patent pool.”

In broadening that effort, GSK will bring on a new partner, the Emory Institute for Drug Discovery, and also turn control over to a nonprofit health group focused on developing biotech medicines, BIO Ventures for Global Health.

The Emory Institute, which launched last May, is focused on what it calls “commercially neglected diseases” through global health partnerships, mentored research and other initiatives.

Plus, GSK will collaborate with a South African firm, iThemba Pharmaceuticals, on developing drugs to treat tuberculosis, The Associated Press reported.

“Malaria is a dreadful disease which stalks the fields and villages of many parts of the least developed world,” Witty is to say in his speech, according to the Times Online in the U.K.

“It has been an intractable problem for decades,” he is expected to say. “Enormous progress has been made through bed-net programs, for example, but a really effective treatment has been somewhat elusive.

“We need to enlist the help of scientists around the world and to make it as easy as possible for that brilliant scientist, wherever they are, to find that initial spark that could be the breakthrough.”

In a Tuesday interview with some media outlets, including The Associated Press, Witty said that through the initiative the company is “deliberately trying to target and stimulate other people into this space.”

GSK will open access to its data as well as its labs as part of the effort. The company hopes to seek approval in 2012 for the first vaccine to combat malaria, which kills some 1 million people a year.

According to the AP, GSK will let other scientists try to develop malaria drugs – free from royalties or other payments to GSK – from that library of compounds. They were winnowed down from more than 2 million screened by hand against potentially dangerous blood samples containing the malaria parasite by five Glaxo scientists who devoted a year to the project, a rare effort for free in an industry focused on profits.

"These are at least reasonable bets to look at," with the compounds showing some effect against the parasite, Witty said.

As many as 60 scientists from around the world will gain access to the “Open Lab” at a GSK facility in Spain.

GSK also will boost initial research with a new foundation and $8 million in funding.

Tags: Biotech & Life Science, GSK, Emory

Editor's Blog

The latest blog posts from our WRAL Tech Wire and WRAL editors. Read more articles…

WRAL Tech Wire