GSK & Verily Life To Jointly Form New Company To Develop Bioelectronic Medicines

(RTTNews) - GSK (GSK, GSK.L) announced an agreement with Verily Life Sciences LLC (formerly Google Life Sciences), an Alphabet company, to form Galvani Bioelectronics to enable the research, development and commercialisation of bioelectronic medicines. GSK will hold a 55% equity interest in the new jointly owned company and Verily will hold 45%. Galvani Bioelectronics will be headquartered in the UK, with the parent companies contributing existing intellectual property rights and an investment of up to 540 million pounds over seven years.

Galvani Bioelectronics will initially employ around 30 expert scientists, engineers and clinicians. Kris Famm, GSK's Vice President of Bioelectronics R&D, has been appointed President of the new company. The new company will be fully consolidated in GSK's financial statements.

Galvani Bioelectronics will be headquartered within GSK's global R&D centre at Stevenage in the UK, with a second research hub at Verily's facilities in South San Francisco. The new company will bring together GSK's drug discovery and development expertise and deep understanding of disease biology with Verily's technical expertise in the miniaturisation of low power electronics, device development, data analytics and software development for clinical applications. Initial work will centre on establishing clinical proofs of principle in inflammatory, metabolic and endocrine disorders, including type 2 diabetes, where substantial evidence already exists in animal models; and developing associated miniaturised, precision devices.