GSK & 3 leading institutions form EU consortium

A new European consortium has been formed including GSK and three leading research institutions, University of Oxford, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois in Lausanne and the Bernhard-Nocht Institute, to help further advance development of a candidate vaccine against Ebola, which is being co-developed by GSK and the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The consortium is backed by funding of €15.1 million from the European Commission Directorate General for Research and Innovation as part of its dedicated Horizon 2020 programme supporting research into treatments and vaccines for Ebola. The consortium also expects to receive an additional €1.4 million from the Swiss government.

The funding is already helping to implement an ongoing trial of an Ebola candidate vaccine being carried out in 120 healthy adult volunteers in Lausanne, Switzerland. If the safety and immunogenicity data from this and other ongoing phase 1 trials are encouraging, the EC funding will enable the consortium to begin larger phase 2 trials in Africa, which could start as early as January 2015.

GSK announces $5 mn Fund to advance bioelectronic medicines research

GSK announced a $5 million Innovation Challenge Fund (ICF) to further encourage and advance collaborative research as part of its effort to develop bioelectronic medicines. The fund will support academic groups and small companies who want to develop solutions for GSK’s Bioelectronics Innovation Challenge, which was developed by a group of leading scientists from around the world. This funding programme is in addition to GSK’s prior commitment of a $1 million award, announced in December 2013, for the team that first solves the Challenge.

Bioelectronic medicine is a relatively new scientific field which could one day result in a new class of treatments that would not be pills or injections but miniaturised, implantable devices. The hope is that these devices could be programmed to read and correct the electrical signals that pass along the nerves of the body, to treat disorders as diverse as inflammatory bowel disease, arthritis, asthma, hypertension and diabetes. Since 2013, GSK has committed significant resource to research in this field.

GSK joins with UK &South African Medical Research Councils

GSK recently announced a £5m collaboration with the UK and South African Medical Research Councils, to support much-needed research into non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Africa, as part of GSK’s Africa NCD Open Lab initiative.



The funding was pledged today by the UK Foreign Office Minister responsible for Africa, James Duddridge, and South Africa’s Minister for Science and Technology, Naledi Pandor, at an event in Cape Town, South Africa, as part of a broader collaboration between the two countries on scientific research. It will be used to support researchers from South African institutions conducting research projects in NCDs, aligned with the objectives of GSK’s Africa NCD Open Lab.

£2.5m will be provided by the UK MRC, via the UK Newton Fund a government fund established in 2013 to develop science and innovation partnerships that promote the economic development and welfare of developing countries and approximately £1.5m will come from the South African Medical Research Council. GSK will provide an additional £1m, together with a commitment of internal R&D expertise, to support projects within South Africa.  As the first initiative to receive support from the UK / South Africa Newton Fund, this is significant external endorsement for GSK’s open approach to NCD research in Africa.

Mylan Inc.

Mylan Inc., a global pharmaceutical company committed to setting new standards in health care, has launched atovaquone and proguanil hydrochloride tablets, 62.5 mg/25 mg and 250 mg/100 mg, the generic version of GlaxoSmithKline's Malarone tablets.