Pharmaceutical Company Increases its Investment in Open Innovation
GlaxoSmithKline plc has announced that it’s going to give the Wellcome Trust in the UK up to £5 million (approx. USD $7.7 million) to support its open innovation approach to the discovery of new treatments for diseases in the developing world.
The open innovation approach to drug and treatment discovery is moving apace with a number of companies embracing collaboration with a global pool of expertise to improve and speed up innovation.
GSK’s allocation of extra funds will be used to find new medicines for such diseases as TB, Leishmaniasis, and malaria. Researchers from numerous countries will work in collaboration with GSK drug discovery experts at its Open Lab facility in Madrid, Spain.
The Need for Wider Collaboration
The announcement brings into sharp focus the need for a collaborative approach. Although, OI is not expected to have all the answers, current drug discovery R&D methods for diseases of the developing world are struggling. Two of the problems are the sheer complexity of the science involved and the low return on investment. So something needs to be done.
“Academic researchers are making incredible progress in our understanding of neglected diseases yet we’ve still got a bottle neck when it comes to the development of new drugs,” said Dr Nick Cammack, Head of GSK’s Tres Cantos Medicines Development Campus, which houses the Open Lab.
“Taking a more collaborative approach, as GSK have through their open lab, will see these advances reap the full benefit of the industry’s commercial expertise to give us the best chance of securing new treatments for these devastating diseases.”
Shot in the Arm
It is believed that open innovation with its greater transparency and more diverse sources of expertise can give the research the shot in the arm it needs.
The £5m Wellcome Trust funding will be used to a) progress the most promising projects currently being undertaken by independent scientists at the Open Lab, and b) pursue active compounds from GSK’s own research portfolio.
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