Further initiatives from GlaxoSmithKline to help tackle global health challenges; TB deal with Aeras

UK pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline (LSE: GSK) yesterday announced new measures to further advance its commitment towards greater openness, transparency and collaboration. Speaking at a meeting hosted by the Wellcome Trust in London y, GSK chief executive Sir Andrew Witty outlined new steps to build on the encouraging signs of progress resulting from the company’s ‘open innovation’ approach to R&D, designed to help develop new solutions for the world’s most serious health challenges.

Over the past few years, GSK has been making fundamental changes to its business model to become more open to sharing its intellectual property and knowledge, and to forming partnerships to help stimulate more R&D into diseases that most affect the world’s poorest people. Building on that progress, today GSK will set out new measures to help develop new and faster-acting treatments for tuberculosis (TB), a huge global health need where R&D has been at an impasse, and to support independent research into diseases of the developing world.

Commenting ahead of the meeting, Sir Andrew said: “As a truly global health care company, I believe we have a responsibility to do all we can at GSK to use our resources, knowledge and expertise to help tackle serious global health challenges. However, the complexity of the science and the scale of the challenge mean that we cannot solve these problems alone. We need to take a different approach – one focused on partnership, collaboration and openness. By being more open with our clinical trial data, we also hope to help further scientific understanding. I am pleased with the progress we have made so far to evolve our business model but we recognise there is more we can do and the new initiatives outlined today will enable us to build on this work.”