A database of more than 13,000 chemical compounds identified as having the potential to act against the malaria parasite is to be freely distributed to the world’s scientists to encourage a cure.
In a unusual move in the highly-competitive field of global pharmaceuticals, GlaxoSmithKline has decided to publish all data it has on the compounds to help speed the battle against malaria. It has spent the last year screening more than two million candidate chemicals in its library to pinpoint those with the most potential.
Andrew Witty, the company’s chief executive, will announce this morning at a conference in New York that the data will be freely disseminated to any scientist interested in taking on the challenge. GSK is also to provide “open lab” placements for 60 scientists at one of its main research laboratories in Spain, which has access to the latest hi-tech industrial processes.
The move, by the world’s second biggest pharmaceutical company, ups the pressure on other companies to prioritise philanthropic research initiatives for the world’s most neglected tropical diseases. It follows GSK’s announcement earlier this year that it was to set up a “patent pool” — to share knowledge about potential drugs that are currently protected by patents.
In a speech to be given at the Council on Foreign Relations, Mr Witty will reiterate the “imperative to earn the trust of society, not just by meeting expectations but by exceeding them”.
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Pharmaceutical companies have come under increasing pressure in recent years to alter their approach to providing cheap drugs to people in the developing world. Criticism has been fiercest for their failure to drop prices for HIV drugs while millions died in Africa and Asia, for defending patents, and for their aggressive approach to generic manufacturers, who undercut them dramatically in countries where patents do not apply.
The reputation of the industry suffered a further damaging blow with the publication and film of John le Carr?’s book The Constant Gardener, which depicted drug companies as uncaring and corrupt.
Speaking before leaving for New York, Mr Witty said: “Malaria is a dreadful disease which stalks the fields and villages of many parts of the least developed world. It has been an intractable problem for decades. Enormous progress has been made through bednet programmes, for example, but a really effective treatment has been somewhat elusive.
“We need to enlist the help of scientists around the world and to make it as easy as possible for that brilliant scientist, wherever they are, to find that initial spark that could be the breakthrough.”
GSK has screened its pharmaceutical compound library of more than 2 million molecules for any that may inhibit the malaria parasite P.falciparum, the deadliest form of malaria which is found primarily in sub-Saharan Africa. The exercise, which took five scientists a year to complete, has yielded more than 13,500 compounds that could lead to the development of new and innovative treatments for malaria, which kills at least one million children every year in Africa
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The findings, including the chemical structures and associated assay data, will be made freely available to the public via leading scientific websites — marking the first time that a pharmaceutical company has made public so much data.
Mr Witty said that in the “Open Lab” project, scientists will be encouraged to tap into the expertise, knowledge and infrastructure of the company, while pursuing their own projects as part of an integrated drug discovery team.
Dr Timothy Wells, chief scientific officer of the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), which collaborates with GSK, said that the new initiatives had the potential to dramatically alter the way the world approaches research and development for neglected diseases.
“By sharing the data, the research community can start to build up a public repository of knowledge that should be as powerful as the human genome databases and could set a new trend to revolutionise the urgent search for new medicines to tackle malaria,” he said.