Future perfect: GSK, Alphabet create Galvani to cure arthiritis, diabetes

As businesses use technology to drive innovation, unusual alliances are being formed. Among them this morning’s announcement of a joint venture between the UK’s most valuable biopharma group, £83bn GSK plc, and US giant Alphabet‘s healthcare arm Verily. The US business was created in 2012 when Google started working on putting computing into contact lenses. That idea developed into an alliance between the Alphabet subsidiary and world’s number two pharma group Novartis to develop a contact lens to help diabetics measure glucose levels. Today’s deal with GSK follows Verily’s robotic surgery joint venture with the industry’s global leader, £265bn Johnson & Johnson. The newly established GSK/Alphabet company will focus on ways to use devices smaller than a grain of rice to read and modify electronic signals sent to organs by the brain. Called Galvani Bioelectronics, it is named after an Italian scientist who, in 1780, discovered the muscles on a frogs legs twitch when electric impulses were sent through its sciatic nerve. That made Luigi Aloisio Galvani the father of the disciplines we know as neuroscience and electrophysiology – and his belated honouring by these modern corporate explorers seeking to read and write the electrical language of the human body. The companies believe this will pave the way to curing many diseases including arthritis, diabetes and asthma.  – Alec Hogg

By Ketaki Gokhale and Caroline Chen

(Bloomberg) — GlaxoSmithKline Plc, the U.K.’s biggest drugmaker, is forming a joint venture with Google parent  Alphabet Inc.’s life-sciences business to research and develop bioelectronic medicines.

Glaxo will hold a 55 percent stake in the venture, called Galvani Bioelectronics, and  Alphabet’s Verily Life Sciences LLC will hold 45 percent, according to a statement on Monday. The companies will make an investment of up to 540 million pounds ($715 million) over seven years, subject to completion of milestones.

Glaxo is seeking to find new sources of revenue growth as its blockbuster respiratory treatment Advair faces the threat of generics in the U.S. Bioelectronic medicine is a new field that aims to tackle chronic diseases using miniature, implanted devices that modify electrical signals that pass along nerves in the body. Glaxo’s researchers believe conditions like arthritis, diabetes and asthma could be treated using these devices.

A GlaxoSmithKline logo is seen outside one of its buildings in west London, February 6, 2008. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo
A GlaxoSmithKline logo is seen outside one of its buildings in west London, February 6, 2008. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo

Verily aims to use technology to develop software and hardware for the health-care field. It is one of Alphabet Inc.’s most important new ventures, residing in the tech giant’s Other Bets division alongside smart-home device maker Nest and fast internet service provider Fiber. In the second quarter, those Other Bets generated $185 million in revenue and Alphabet Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat said that mostly came from Nest, Fiber and Verily, in that order.

Verily has worked extensively with traditional pharmaceutical companies, such as developing smart contact lenses that can measure glucose with Novartis AG and helping Biogen Inc. study the progression of multiple sclerosis with sensors and data analysis tools. The collaboration with Glaxo is not the first joint venture for Verily: in December, it funded a robotic surgery company with Johnson & Johnson.

From GlaxoSmithKline:

GSK (LSE/NYSE: GSK) today announced an agreement with Verily Life Sciences LLC (formerly Google Life Sciences), an Alphabet company, to form Galvani Bioelectronics to enable the research, development and commercialisation of bioelectronic medicines. GSK will hold a 55% equity interest in the new jointly owned company and Verily will hold 45%.

Galvani Bioelectronics will be headquartered in the UK, with the parent companies contributing existing intellectual property rights and an investment of up to £540 million over seven years, subject to successful completion of various discovery and development milestones.

A Google search page is seen through a magnifying glass in this photo illustration taken in Berlin, August 11, 2015. REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski/File Photo
A Google search page is seen through a magnifying glass in this photo illustration taken in Berlin, August 11, 2015. REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski/File Photo

Bioelectronic medicine is a relatively new scientific field that aims to tackle a wide range of chronic diseases using miniaturised, implantable devices that can modify electrical signals that pass along nerves in the body, including irregular or altered impulses that occur in many illnesses. GSK has been active in this field since 2012 and believes certain chronic conditions such as arthritis, diabetes and asthma could potentially be treated using these devices.

The agreement to establish Galvani Bioelectronics represents an important next step in GSK’s bioelectronics research. The new company will bring together GSK’s world class drug discovery and development expertise and deep understanding of disease biology with Verily’s world leading technical expertise in the miniaturisation of low power electronics, device development, data analytics and software development for clinical applications. Initial work will centre on establishing clinical proofs of principle in inflammatory, metabolic and endocrine disorders, including type 2 diabetes, where substantial evidence already exists in animal models; and developing associated miniaturised, precision devices.

Moncef Slaoui, GSK’s Chairman of Global Vaccines, who was instrumental in establishing GSK’s investments in the field of bioelectronics, will chair the board of the new company. He said:

“Many of the processes of the human body are controlled by electrical signals firing between the nervous system and the body’s organs, which may become distorted in many chronic diseases. Bioelectronic medicine’s vision is to employ the latest advances in biology and technology to interpret this electrical conversation and to correct the irregular patterns found in disease states, using miniaturised devices attached to individual nerves. If successful, this approach offers the potential for a new therapeutic modality alongside traditional medicines and vaccines.

Read also: A cure for type 1 diabetes. Prof Eli Lewis on a medical holy grail

“This agreement with Verily to establish Galvani Bioelectronics signals a crucial step forward in GSK’s bioelectronics journey, bringing together health and tech to realise a shared vision of miniaturised, precision electrical therapies. Together, we can rapidly accelerate the pace of progress in this exciting field, to develop innovative medicines that truly speak the electrical language of the body.”

Brian Otis, Verily’s Chief Technology Officer, said: “This is an ambitious collaboration allowing GSK and Verily to combine forces and have a huge impact on an emerging field.  Bioelectronic medicine is a new area of therapeutic exploration, and we know that success will require the confluence of deep disease biology expertise and new highly miniaturised technologies.

“This partnership provides an opportunity to further Verily’s mission by deploying our focused expertise in low power, miniaturised therapeutics and our data analytics engine to potentially address many disease areas with greater precision with the goal of improving outcomes.”

Galvani Bioelectronics will be headquartered within GSK’s global R&D centre at Stevenage in the UK, with a second research hub at Verily’s facilities in South San Francisco. It will initially employ around 30 expert scientists, engineers and clinicians, and will fund and integrate a broad range of collaborations with both parent companies, academia and other R&D companies. GSK and Verily believe this collaborative way of working will rapidly accelerate the development of bioelectronic medicines.

Read also: A ‘tsunami’ of diabetes about to engulf the workplace – how to halt it

Kris Famm, GSK’s Vice President of Bioelectronics R&D, has been appointed President of the new company. Famm has pioneered work in both large and small molecule drug discovery and worked for a decade developing and delivering R&D strategy with a recurring focus on emerging technologies. He has co-designed and led GSK’s exploration of bioelectronics.  A seven-member board, chaired by Moncef Slaoui, will also be appointed and will include Andrew Conrad, CEO of Verily. The new company will be fully consolidated in GSK’s financial statements.

This agreement is subject to customary closing conditions (including requisite antitrust approvals) and is expected to close before the end of 2016.

From Reuters

By Ben Hirschler

LONDON (Reuters) – GlaxoSmithKline and Google parent Alphabet’s life sciences unit are creating a new company focused on fighting diseases by targeting electrical signals in the body, jump-starting a novel field of medicine called bioelectronics.

Verily Life Sciences – known as Google’s life sciences unit until last year – and Britain’s biggest drugmaker will together contribute 540 million pounds ($715 million) over seven years to Galvani Bioelectronics, they said on Monday.

The new company, owned 55 percent by GSK and 45 percent by Verily, will be based at GSK’s Stevenage research center north of London, with a second research hub in South San Francisco.

It is GSK’s second notable investment in Britain since the country voted to leave the European Union in June. Last week it announced plans to spend 275 million pounds on drug manufacturing.

Galvani will develop miniaturized, implantable devices that can modify electrical nerve signals. The aim is to modulate irregular or altered impulses that occur in many illnesses.

GSK believes chronic conditions such as diabetes, arthritis and asthma could be treated using these tiny devices, which consist of a electronic collar that wraps around nerves.

Kris Famm, GSK’s head of bioelectronics research and president of Galvani, said the first bioelectronic medicines using these implants to stimulate nerves could be submitted for regulatory approval by around 2023.

“We have had really promising results in animal tests, where we’ve shown we can address some chronic diseases with this mechanism, and now we are bringing that work into the clinic,” he told Reuters.

“Our goal is to have our first medicines ready for regulatory approval in seven years.”

GSK first unveiled its ambitions in bioelectronics in a paper in the journal Nature three years ago and believes it is ahead of Big Pharma rivals in developing medicines that use electrical impulses rather than traditional chemicals or proteins.

The tie-up shows the growing convergence of healthcare and technology. Verily already has several other medical projects in the works, including the development of a smart contact lens in partnership with the Swiss drugmaker Novartis that has an embedded glucose sensor to help monitor diabetes.

GRAIN OF RICE

Famm said the first generation of implants coming to market would be around the size of a medical pill but the aim eventually was to make them as small or smaller than a grain of rice, using the latest advances in nanotechnology.

Patients will be treated with keyhole surgery and the hope is that bioelectronic medicine could provide a one-off treatment, potentially lasting decades.

Major challenges including making the devices ultra low-power so that they function reliably deep inside the body.

The idea of treating serious disease with electrical impulses is not completely new.

Large-scale electrical devices have been used for years as heart pacemakers and, more recently, deep brain stimulation has been applied to treat Parkinson’s disease and severe depression, while EnteroMedics last year won U.S. approval for a device to help obese people control their appetite.

Galvani, however, is taking electrical interventions to the micro level, using tiny implants to coax insulin from cells to treat diabetes, for example, or correct muscle imbalances in lung diseases.

Galvani will initially employ around 30 scientists, engineers and clinicians.

The company will be chaired by Moncef Slaoui, GSK’s vaccines head, who pioneered the drugmaker’s drive into the bioelectronics field. Slaoui is retiring from GSK next March but will continue to steer Galvani after that date, a spokesman said.

Galvani will be fully consolidated in GSK’s financial statements, following the model of the group’s majority-owned ViiV Healthcare business, which sells HIV medicines.

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