GlaxoSmithKline has teamed up with Alphabet, Google’s holding company, to treat disease through miniature implants that affect electrical signalling…

GlaxoSmithKline has teamed up with Alphabet, Google’s holding company, to treat disease through miniature implants that affect electrical signalling along nerves, with the aim of creating a powerful new force in bioelectronics

GSK and Alphabet’s Verily Life Sciences — formerly Google Life Sciences — are setting up Galvani Bioelectronics to develop and commercialise bioelectronic medicines. They plan to invest ￡540m over seven years in the jointly owned company, as well as contributing existing intellectual property

GSK will own 55 per cent of the new UK-based business and Verily the remaining 45 per cent. Galvani will be based at GSK’s main UK research centre in Stevenage

Bioelectronics is a new medical field that aims to tackle a wide range of chronic diseases, such as arthritis, diabetes and asthma, with tiny computerised implants. This approach could represent a third way of treating disease, alongside conventional medicines and vaccines developed through chemistry and biology

Moncef Slaoui, who has championed GSK’s bioelectronics research since the company started working in the field in 2012, said: “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