Technology and health care leaders from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) have partnered with Verily Life Sciences LLC to use the body’s electrical signals for chronic disease treatments.
“This is an ambitious collaboration allowing GSK and Verily to combine forces and have a huge impact on an emerging field,” Brian Otis, Verily’s chief technology officer, said. “Bioelectronic medicine is a new area of therapeutic exploration, and we know that success will require the confluence of deep disease biology expertise and new highly miniaturized technologies.”
The partners will form Galvani Bioelectronics, which will research, develop and market bioelectronics medicine. According to the agreement, GSK will own 55 percent of the equity interest with the new company. Verily will hold the remaining 45 percent.
“Many of the processes of the human body are controlled by electrical signals firing between the nervous system and the body’s organs, which may become distorted in many chronic diseases,” Moncef Slaoui, GSK’s chairman of global vaccines, said. “Bioelectronic medicine’s vision is to employ the latest advances in biology and technology to interpret this electrical conversation and to correct the irregular patterns found in disease states, using miniaturized devices attached to individual nerves. If successful, this approach offers the potential for a new therapeutic modality alongside traditional medicines and vaccines.”
The goal is to develop miniature, implantable devices that can change the body’s electrical signals to create irregular or altered impulses. These impulses may be useful for healing chronic diseases.
