The companies are forming Galvani Biolelectronics together with an investment of US $ 715 million and intends to send its first drug approval in seven years.
Reuters. GlaxoSmithKline and Alphabet unit life sciences of Google are creating a new company dedicated to the fight against diseases using electrical signals in the body, starting a new field of medicine called bioelectronics
Verily life Sciences -. unit known as life sciences Google until last year- and the largest pharmaceutical Britain together contribute about US $ 715 million over seven years Galvani Bioelectronics.
the new company, owned 55% of GSK and 45% Verily, be based on the research center GSK Stevenage north London, with a second research center in south San Francisco.
This is the second significant investment by GSK in Britain since the country voted to leave the European Union June. Last week announced plans to invest US $ 362.9 million in the manufacture of drugs.
Galvani develop miniaturized implantable devices that can modify the electrical nerve signals. The aim is to modulate the irregular pulses or altered occurring in many diseases.
GSK believes that chronic conditions such as diabetes, arthritis and asthma can be treated using these small devices, consisting of a necklace mail that wraps around nerves.
Kris Famm, head of research at bioelectronics GSK and chairman of Galvani, said the first bioelectronics drugs with these implants to stimulate nerves could be submitted for approval regulatory near 2023.
“we have had very promising results in animal tests, in which we have demonstrated that we can deal with some chronic diseases with this mechanism, and we are now bringing this work to clinker” he told Reuters. “Our goal is that our first medicines are ready for regulatory approval in seven years.”
GSK unveiled for the first time its ambitions in bioelectronics in an article in Nature three years ago and believes that he is ahead of rivals large pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs using electrical impulses instead of traditional chemicals or proteins.
This union demonstrates the growing convergence of health and technology. Verily already it has several other medical projects at work, including the development of a lens contact smart in collaboration with Swiss drugmaker Novartis has a built to help monitor diabetes glucose sensor.
a grain of rice
Famm said the first generation of implants that reach the market would have a similar to a normal pill size, but ultimately the goal is to make as much as or smaller than a grain of rice, using the latest advances in nanotechnology.
patients will be treated with minimally invasive surgery and the hope is that bioelectronics medicine could provide a treatment at once, with the potential to last for decades.
One of the most important moments that devices have an ultra low power consumption to operate reliably within the body.
the idea of treating serious diseases with ballons electric is not entirely new. Electric devices on a large scale have been used for years as cardiac pacemakers and, more recently, deep brain stimulation has been applied to treat Parkinson’s disease and severe depression while EnteroMedics last year won approval from US .S. for a device to help obese people control their appetite.
Galvani, however, is leading electrical micro-level interventions, using tiny implants to convince insulin from cells for treatment diabetes, for example, or to correct muscle imbalances in lung diseases.
Galvani initially employ about 30 scientists, engineers and doctors. The company will be headed by Moncef Slaoui, head of GSK vaccines, which pioneered the pharmaceutical unit in the field of bioelectronics. Slaoui is removed from GSK next March, but continue driving Galvani after that date, a spokesman said.
Galvani will be fully consolidated in the financial statements of GSK, following the business model of ViiV Healthcare with participation majority of the group, which sells drugs for HIV.
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