Multimillion Dollar Investment Launches Drug Development Research Startup

A global healthcare company with research and development interests in the area of pharmaceuticals, vaccines, and consumer healthcare will be financing an independent startup to promote drug development through advances in the understanding of gene function and control.

The biopharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (London, United Kingdom) will be investing 95 million USD to launch the startup Altius Institute for Biomedical Sciences. Altius will be located in Seattle, WA, USA. The agreement is for 10 years of collaboration during which GlaxoSmithKline will have first rights to option inventions and products developed by Altius and to invest in commercialization of its discoveries via spinout companies. Additional funding from GlaxoSmithKline will be provided as necessary to tie technologies and discoveries made by Altius to a wide range of drug discovery and development projects.

“Dramatic breakthroughs in understanding how the human genome functions are still in their infancy in terms of how they can be applied to drug discovery, but we can see their potential to transform the process,” said Lon Cardon, senior vice president of alternative discovery and development at GlaxoSmithKline. “This is not an incremental change. We are aiming for transformative outcomes that could improve our ability to bring innovative and more effective new medicines to patients.”

Altius Institute for Biomedical Sciences is to be headed by Dr. John Stamatoyannopoulos, professor of genome sciences at the University of Washington (Seattle, USA). “With this visionary investment, GlaxoSmithKline is gaining a front-line view into the revolution now underway in understanding how cells function,” said Dr. Stamatoyannopoulos. “Innovative technologies are needed to gain a deeper understanding of how cells’ "operating systems" work.”

Related Links:
GlaxoSmithKline
University of Washington School of Medicine