|8 August 2016|
UK
The newly formed Galavan Bioelectronics is to spearhead the global development of bioelectronic medicines. And the new company – formed between GSK and Verily Life Sciences LLC (formerly Google Life Sciences), an Alphabet company – will be headquartered in the UK and receive an investment of up to £540 million over the next seven years from the deal.
Quite a new scientific field, bioelectronic medicine has the capabilities to target a number 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.
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.”
