How GSK And Google's Verily Will Tackle Diseases With Nerve-Altering Chips

GlaxoSmithKline and Alphabet unit Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences) made a splash yesterday when they announced the launch of Galvani Bioelectronics, a company that will build upon GSK’s three years of work to develop tiny nerve-altering devices that might one day be used instead of drugs to treat a variety of diseases. The two companies will invest up to £540 million (more than $700 million) over the next seven years, they said, employing 30 scientists at GSK’s research center in the U.K. and at Verily in South San Francisco.

So what, exactly, is bioelectronic medicine? The idea of this new branch of life sciences is to place devices directly into the body to alter the activity of specific nerves, in turn sending signals to organs and, ideally, reversing a particular disease state. In 2013, GSK launched a $50 million venture fund to foster the development of bioelectronic devices. (For more on bioelectronics, see the video from GSK below.)

Moncef Slaoui, who chairs GSK’s global vaccines group and will chair the board of the new company, says Verily will be the ideal partner for developing biolectronic devices because it provides GSK with much-needed technology expertise. “When we started to conceptualize bioelectronic medicine as a new avenue for discovery, we realized very quickly that it wasn’t our forte to design nanochips, wireless communications, big data analytics" and other vital electronic components, Slaoui says. GSK approached just about every major technology player looking for a strategic partner, he adds, but most were skittish about the regulatory challenges of developing micro-devices that would be implanted in the body. “They had interest but not really enthusiasm,” Slaoui says. “In contrast, with Verily, we had immediate alignment on the vision, the integration between biology and technology and the risk-taking and capital allocation needed to drive this concept all the way through to actual products.”

Galvani’s plan is to develop prototype devices that can either stimulate nerves or block nerve transmissions, Slaoui says. The company will test the devices in diabetes, as well as in two diseases that have not been named but that will fall under the broad categories of autoimmune and endocrine disorders. He expects Galvani will be able to start those trials within 12 to 18 months and complete them in three years. The company will use the results to guide its investments in larger, more involved studies.

GSK has spent the last few years creating a "nerve atlas," which is basically a map showing how all the nerves in the body affect organs and disease processes. Translating that knowledge into devices that can influence those signals in a therapeutic fashion is a major hurdle that GSK will be counting on Verily to help navigate. "Ultimately this becomes a signal-processing challenge and a data problem," says Brian Otis, chief technology officer of Verily. "Of course Verily and Google have a lot of expertise in dealing with large amounts of data, making decisions based on the data, and then feeding back to the user. That's why we think we can contribute in multiple ways to this."

Prior to teaming up with Verily, GSK had already formed about 50 research collaborations around the world in bioelectronics. Among its investments is SetPoint Medical, a California company that’s developing bioelectronics to treat inflammatory diseases. In June, SetPoint published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal reporting that implanting a stimulatory device on the vagus nerves of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) significantly inhibited the production of the inflammatory protein tumor necrosis factor (TNF) for up to 84 days. Inhibiting TNF is the mechanism by which some of the most popular RA drugs work, including Amgen ’s Enbrel (etanercept) and AbbVie ’s Humira (adalimumab).

Slaoui says the SetPoint data is impressive, but that Galvani will take a much more refined approach to developing bioelectronics. The vagus nerve impacts many organs of the body, raising the risk of untoward side effects, he says. Galvani’s approach will be to target nerves that are more directly aligned with the organs that are central to the diseases it is going after, he says.

Just how bioelectronics will fit into the world of healthcare remains to be determined. Slaoui says he doesn’t expect these devices to replace drugs. Rather, he says, they may amplify the effectiveness of certain treatments. And they may prove useful in solving one of the biggest problems in healthcare, which is the inability of many patients to adhere to drug regimens. “After six months, 50% of patients with type 2 diabetes stop taking their medicines,” he says. “The advantage of bioelectronics is you don’t have to remember to take your drugs.”

Perhaps, but some are already questioning whether Verily is the right partner to help GSK realize its bioelectronic ambitions. A tough review in STAT pointed out that not much has come of Verily’s partnership with Alcon to develop a glucose-detecting contact lens, nor has Verily come through on its promise to unveil a device that can detect early signs of cancer in blood tests.

But Otis says Verily is making "great progress" on several joint research programs with Alcon and other companies, and that is is progressing well in a partnership with Johnson & Johnson to develop robotic surgical systems. Slaoui believes these experiences, coupled with Verily's technology pedigree, will accelerate the work GSK has already accomplished in bioelectronics. "Verily has great engineering capabilities and also expertise in big data analytics," Slaoui says. "The chemistry between us is perfect."