Precision Medicine Era Dawns: GSK and 23andMe Forge $300M, Four-Year Drug Discovery Partnership
On July 25, British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and genetic testing company 23andMe announced a four-year partnership to jointly advance drug research and development. Both parties aim to identify new drug targets to facilitate disease research and the development of novel therapies.
According to VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat), GSK and 23andMe will jointly work on translating genetic and phenotypic data into R&D activities, which include:
1. Improve the selection of novel drug targets to deliver safer and more precise new drugs. In this field, genetic data can significantly enhance our understanding of the pathways and mechanisms underlying diseases, thereby supporting the design and development of targeted therapies.
2. Facilitating the identification and selection of patient subgroups. With 80% of 23andMe users consenting to have their genetic data used for research, these large-scale datasets hold promise for identifying patients more likely to benefit from treatments in future clinical trials.
3. More effective recruitment of patients for clinical trials. By identifying patient subgroups with specific genetic characteristics, we can accelerate their enrollment in clinical trials and shorten the clinical development cycle.
Under the terms of the agreement, GSK and 23andMe have entered into a four-year collaboration, with an option to extend into a fifth year, making GSK the exclusive partner for 23andMe’s drug target discovery program. During this period, the companies will leverage 23andMe’s extensive database and proprietary statistical analytics to advance drug target discovery, with the aim of jointly identifying novel targets suitable for further development. The joint GSK-23andMe drug discovery team will utilize their combined resources to identify new targets and prioritize them based on the strength of biological hypotheses, druggability, and clinical opportunity.
The collaboration between GSK and 23andMe could be launched immediately, focusing on GSK’s LRRK2 inhibitor for Parkinson’s disease, which is currently in the preclinical development stage.
Through 23andMe’s genetic testing reports, users can determine whether they carry LRRK2 variants, while GSK and 23andMe can leverage these reports to strategically recruit patients, thereby accelerating the progress of clinical research.
Dr. Hal Barron, Chief Scientific Officer and President of Research and Development at GSK, stated: “We are very excited about this unique partnership, as we recognize that drug targets validated by genetics have the potential to ultimately benefit patients and become medicines. Collaborating with 23andMe, an organization whose vision and capabilities are transforming the understanding of how genes influence health, will help transform our R&D organization into one that is ‘genetics-driven’ and increase GSK’s impact on patients.”
Ms. Anne Wojcicki, CEO and Co-Founder of 23andMe, stated, “This collaboration will enable us to deliver the disease treatments that patients have long sought. By leveraging genetics and phenotypic data provided with patient consent, along with GSK’s outstanding expertise and resources in new drug discovery, we believe we can accelerate the realization of therapies that treat and cure diseases.”
23andMe now has more than 5 million users. These users can choose whether to participate in related studies and provide personal information to build the world’s largest genetic and phenotypic database. As part of this collaboration, GSK made a $300 million equity investment in 23andMe. The two parties will each contribute half of the funding for project implementation, with the option to reduce their respective funding shares or extend the collaboration period to five years.
This is not the first time that 23andMe, a company based in California, has entered the healthcare industry. In March this year, 23andMe became the first company to receive approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for cancer genetic testing. This means that 23andMe can directly market cancer risk testing products to consumers.
This test is designed to identify BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene variants, which are frequently found in individuals of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. Women who carry these variants have a 45% to 85% risk of developing breast cancer by age 70. These genetic mutations can also lead to male breast cancer, prostate cancer, and ovarian cancer in women. Lynparza (olaparib), manufactured by AstraZeneca, is effective in treating ovarian and breast cancers associated with BRCA mutations.
In December 2017, 23andMe launched a genetic study on weight loss involving 100,000 participants. Four years earlier, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had issued a warning letter to 23andMe for marketing its saliva collection kits and personal genomic services without regulatory approval.
References
https://medcitynews.com/2018/07/gsk-23andme-sign-four-year-drug-discovery-partnership/?rf=1