GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and the Francis Crick Institute, a UK-based biomedical research facility, have formed an open innovation collaboration exploring new avenues of medical research and drug discovery across a broad range of diseases. This will be the first collaboration to be established between the Crick, which is scheduled to open at the end of 2015, and a pharmaceutical company.

Under the collaboration, teams of scientists from each organization will work side-by-side in integrated teams at the Crick's center of biomedical research in London and GSK's global R&D hub in Stevenage, the UK. The close proximity of these two sites and the institutions' complementary areas of expertise is intended to foster collaborative, innovative research, including basic scientific understanding of human disease, which could improve the success rate for discovering new medicines. The researchers will conduct biological research projects focused on learning more about how diseases take hold in the body and how they could best be treated, which in turn is expected to result in increased efficiency and reduced attrition in R&D. Research findings from the collaboration will be shared with the broader scientific community, via joint publication in peer-reviewed journals.

GSK and the Crick will contribute in-kind resources, including lab space and the scientific expertise of 20 staff to the collaboration. GSK will also provide important research tools to the collaboration, including access to its non-development compound library, key antibodies, reagents and technologies, which will be used to address key questions in disease biology.

A number of projects within this collaboration exploring diseases, including HIV, malaria and cancer,are expected to start in 2015. This will build up to a steady state of 10-15 projects in 2016. The Francis Crick Institute is a new biomedical research institute. Its purpose-built laboratory in the King's Cross area of London will open at the end of 2015. The institute is supported by the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK, the Wellcome Trust, UCL (University College London), Imperial College London, and King's College London.

Source: GlaxoSmithKline