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Google's Alphabet and GSK Forge $715 Million Bioelectronic Firm To Fight Diseases Without Meds (reuters.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the big-pharma dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Google parent Alphabet's life sciences unit are creating a new company focused on fighting diseases by targeting electrical signals in the body, jump-starting a novel field of medicine called bioelectronics. Verily Life Sciences -- known as Google's life sciences unit until last year -- and Britain's biggest drugmaker will together contribute 540 million pounds ($715 million) over seven years to Galvani Bioelectronics, they said on Monday. The new company, owned 55 percent by GSK and 45 percent by Verily, will be based at GSK's Stevenage research center north of London, with a second research hub in South San Francisco. Galvani will develop miniaturized, implantable devices that can modify electrical nerve signals. The aim is to modulate irregular or altered impulses that occur in many illnesses. GSK believes chronic conditions such as diabetes, arthritis and asthma could be treated using these tiny devices, which consist of a electronic collar that wraps around nerves. Kris Famm, GSK's head of bioelectronics research and president of Galvani, said the first bioelectronic medicines using these implants to stimulate nerves could be submitted for regulatory approval by around 2023. GSK first unveiled its ambitions in bioelectronics in a paper in the journal Nature three years ago and believes it is ahead of Big Pharma rivals in developing medicines that use electrical impulses rather than traditional chemicals or proteins.

27 comments

  1. Will a subscription model apply? by Traf-O-Data-Hater · · Score: 2

    The first thing that came to mind was, there will be some sort of external control by GSK. If you don't pay some sort of subscription to keep the device managing your nerves, would they turn off the device so you have your old symptoms back?

    1. Re:Will a subscription model apply? by NotInHere · · Score: 1

      No, but you will have to sync your device with your google account so that they can find out which ad excites you and which doesn't.

    2. Re: Will a subscription model apply? by ljw1004 · · Score: 2

      It will be ad-supported. "Other people with nerve impulses like yours bought Daz Automatic".

    3. Re:Will a subscription model apply? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, they will amp it up. A friendly reminder to pay your fee. Bzzzt!

  2. if it sounds like a duck .... by frovingslosh · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't care if GSK and Google are behind it, it just sounds like wishful thinking and quackery to me. Reminds me of the bogus medical devices that you find in old snake-oil museums.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    1. Re:if it sounds like a duck .... by ThatsMyNick · · Score: 1

      Dont worry. It will go through FDA approval unlike the bogus medical devices in snake-oil museums. It would be like any other FDA approved procedure.

      There are tablet and medicines displayed in those museums too, I dont see you being skeptical of modern day tablets and medicines.

  3. All your attention are belong to us, the google by shanen · · Score: 1

    Each and EVERY time I see one of these feel-good stories about the google I just remember that their basic business model is to rape my personal information for THEIR profit. Any "free" service they offer is just a pittance on their profits from abusing my privacy.

    There are alternatives, but if any business with an alternative economic model became an actual threat, you can be certain that EVERY company like the google that is firmly committed to abusing YOUR privacy would combine their resources to crush it into the dust. Eyeballs for ads is the GAWD.

    Data and Goliath by Bruce Schneier is a good discussion of the topic, though I think he's too kind of Amazon. I can say that even though I haven't finished the book because it is impossible to say enough bad things about Amazon. The google is still #2 or #2.5...

    --
    Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
  4. Are e-meters involved? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    (eom)

    1. Re: Are e-meters involved? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You will have to sign a billion year NDA to find out. On the other hand the auditing class is free if you agree to look at adverts, but the class is beta only and will be canceled just before you go clear.

  5. Quick question by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 1

    Okay, admittedly I'm not a doctor, so can someone answer a quick question for me?

    With what conceivable mechanism would electrical stimulation of nerves help with the management of chronic diabetes?

    1. Re:Quick question by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      Well, you know, like electricity and magnetism and stuff. OK here is the deal: here at Google we have way too much cash. We are getting older and getting worried about our health. I'll bet this will save us all!

    2. Re:Quick question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe you could alter hunger and help with weight loss? I agree with you, I'm pretty much grasping at straws trying to figure out where they're coming from on that one.

    3. Re:Quick question by justcauseisjustthat · · Score: 1

      The vagus nerve runs from the brain to every major organ in the body is is referred to as the brain gut highway and is thought to help control the biome in the gut. That biome being out of wack is currently believed to be responsible for obesity, diabetes and a large number of auto-immune diseases
      http://www.innovateli.com/study-big-news-vagus-pioneer-tracey/

    4. Re:Quick question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      With what conceivable mechanism would electrical stimulation of nerves help with the management of chronic diabetes?

      Presumably, it would target somewhere in the insulin production / glucose uptake pathways. It's possible that damping or amplifying certain signals to increase the body's natural insulin production or trigger increased glucose uptake would have the same effect as insulin injections, or the various glucose-maintaining medications such as Metformin and the like.

      I'm not saying it is definitely possible... I'm saying it's *conceivable* that something like this could be done that might amp up or damp down the body's own mechanisms for controlling these things - the medications aren't magical sponges, after all - they have specific effects in the body which manipulate various metabolic pathways to enhance or suppress production of various hormones and other chemicals.

    5. Re:Quick question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Follow up to my own post. The very article says:

      Galvani, however, is taking electrical interventions to the micro level, using tiny implants to coax insulin from cells to treat diabetes, for example, or correct muscle imbalances in lung diseases.

      What the precise mechanism is, I don't know. But it appears I was right - they're targeting insulin production pathways with this technique. Rather than inject foreign insulin into your body, or take medication to control your blood sugar, it sure would seem preferable to me to find a way to stimulate the body to produce its own insulin to control the blood sugar levels in your body. So... apparently it *is* possible, and they're working on finding a way to do just that.

    6. Re:Quick question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      From Wikipedia:

      Insulin secretion
      The glucose that goes in the bloodstream after food consumption also enters the beta cells in the Islets of Langerhans in the pancreas. The glucose passively diffuses in the beta cell through a GLUT-2 vesicle. Inside the beta cell, the following process occurs:

      Glucose gets converted to Glucose-6-Phosphate (G6P) through Glucokinase; and G6P is subsequently oxidized to form ATP. This process inhibits the ATP sensitive potassium ion channels of the cell causing the Potassium ion channel to close and not function anymore. The closure of the ATP-sensitive potassium channels causes depolarization of the cell membrane causing the cell membrane to stretch which causes the voltage-gated calcium channel on the membrane to open causing an influx of Ca2+ ions. This influx then stimulates fusion of the insulin vesicles (bubble like structure with insulin in them) to the cell membrane and secretion of insulin in the extracellular fluid outside the beta cell; thus making it enter the bloodstream.

      Note the key stuff: potassium ion; calcium ion; depolarization of the cell membrane; voltage-gated calcium channel. Sure sounds like stuff that would be sensitive to the controlled application of a small electrical charge, dunnit?

      You may not like GSK, you may not like "big Pharma," but they are NOT idiots. If they're betting a few hundred million on this tech, at the *very* least, there's some promise and some evidence to suggest that this novel approach will work. Whether or not they'll be able to turn it into a viable therapeutic remains to be seen, but dismissing them because YOU don't understand the pathology of these diseases and the mechanisms they're related to in the body does not make you smart enough to simply dismiss the idea with some hand-waving smarm.

      You sound like an idiot - are you, by any chance, a Juggalo? "Fucking magnets, how do they work?" indeed.

  6. So APPLE will call theirs the Steve Jobs center by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    for Magical Thinking?

  7. Bob Beck in the 80s by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bob Beck talked about this in the 80s. Check it out.

  8. About time the electrons came back. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sounds a lot like the kind of technology which the pharmaceutical industry killed more than 70 years ago. About time we had a revival.

  9. Vagus Nerve Stimulation going to be big money by justcauseisjustthat · · Score: 2

    A couple companies are dipping their toes into the Vagus Nerve Stimulation market, with it potentially curing a number of auto-immune disorders (RH, UC, Crohn's), epilepsy, etc.

    The fun part is you can already do the treatment without electrical stimulation, but it may be better to have clear testable scenarios.

    1. Re:Vagus Nerve Stimulation going to be big money by justcauseisjustthat · · Score: 2

      VNS Clinical Trials

      https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=vns&Search=Search

  10. Kill people without meds by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fegan’s repeated bouts of near death and resurrection coincided precisely with brief electrical jolts coming from a small device that had been implanted under his collarbone six years earlier to control his severe epilepsy. The Vagus Nerve Stimulation, or VNS, device sends electrical impulses to the vagus nerve, which controls many crucial body functions. Fegan’s neurologist raced to the ER to turn off the device-and Fegan’s heart began beating normally again. [Medical Devices That Can Kill]

  11. yes but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Will it help against bird mites?

  12. Shades of ... by TonyAtWork · · Score: 1

    The Paradise Game by Brian Stableford - A Hooded Swan novel - book 4.

  13. I don't have the vagus recollection... by PJ6 · · Score: 1

    Scientist 1: (stares at patient on floor)
    Scientist 1: Well that didn't work.
    Scientist 2: *sniff* You smell something?