GSK Shares Research Data with the Malaria Community

25 May 2010
London, 25 May: In a move unprecedented among pharmaceutical companies, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has made freely available key scientific information on more than 13,500 compounds that could ultimately lead to new treatments for malaria.

The data is the result of research comes from a year-long screening of more than 2 million compounds in GSK’s chemical library to seek out those that could inhibit the malaria parasite, P. falciparum, and reports on the analysis of the more than 13,500 compounds that showed greatest activity. More than 80% of these molecules are proprietary to GSK, and therefore the information will be new to the research community.

Malaria Consortium welcomes the initiative as part of the fight to eliminate malaria. “The investments that GSK has made over the years to accrue this information will probably never be disclosed, but going forward will lead to savings that researchers will make by using this information to inform their drug discovery pipelines,” said James Tibenderana, Director of Case Management.

“This selfless act of goodwill is commendable and should translate into novel drugs for malaria and possibly other diseases in the not too distant future. There is an urgent need for more types of anti-malarials so that malaria case management is less reliant on artemisinin derivatives. Malaria Consortium salutes GSK on this historical event.”

“The world desperately needs new medicines to fight malaria,” said Dr Patrick Vallance, head of Drug Discovery at GSK. “These data provide us and other researchers around the world with several new leads to follow. We hope this information will drive further studies into the disease, and we call for all researchers to add their findings back to the EBI to create an open worldwide collaboration to expand our collective knowledge and make new medicines.”

All the data is available online through the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and Collaborative Drug Discovery (CDD).

For more information, Contact Diana Thomas [email protected]