GSK gains more funding to treat diseases in developing world

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has picked up more funding to treat diseases in the developing world.

It will collect up to £5 million from the Wellcome Trust to support its open approach to finding and developing new treatments for diseases in undeveloped areas of the globe.

The money will then be used to push early-stage research into the next level. discovering medicines for diseases such as TB, malaria, Leishmaniassis and sleeping sickness.

Scientists from around the globe will team up with drug discovery experts at GSK at its Madrid facility, where all of the work will be focused in a bid to reach the goal of developing experimental drugs over the course of the next five years.

The money will be used to provide scientists with the opportunity to advance projects underway from independent scientists at the Open Lab and GSK’s own research portfolio.

Dr Nick Cammack, head of GSK’s Tres Cantos Medicines Development Campus, which houses the Open Lab  said: “This support highlights a growing recognition that collaborative and open research is the key to tackling these devastating diseases.

“Since adopting an open approach to discovering new medicines for developing world diseases, we’ve hosted some of the world’s brightest academic scientists at Tres Cantos.

“The fusion of their academic excellence with GSK expertise has yielded some really exciting research projects. This tremendous show of support from the Wellcome Trust means we now have the potential to start driving these projects further towards finding new medicines.”

At the moment, there are 12 active projects in GSK’s Open Lab portfolio, which are all being used to investigate new treatments for diseases in the developing world, such as malaria and TB, alongside other diseases that have often been neglected by scientists.

Posted by Ben Evans