GlaxoSmithKline has teamed up with Google’s parent company Alphabet to develop miniature electronic implants for the treatment of asthma, diabetes and other chronic conditions.

GSK, Britain’s biggest drug company, said it would form a joint venture with Verily Life Sciences, a division of Alphabet, to work on research into bioelectronic medicines. GSK will own 55% of Galvani Bioelectronics, and Verily will hold 45%.

Galvani will be based at GSK’s global research and development centre at Stevenage, Hertfordshire, just north of London, and will have a second research hub at Verily’s base in San Francisco. The companies will combine their existing intellectual property rights and invest up to £540m over seven years if the collaboration meets certain goals.

GSK has been working on bioelectronic medicines since 2012 in a push to develop new patentable treatments as its Advair respiratory treatment faces competition from generic versions. It has invested $50m (£38m) in a venture capital fund for bioelectronics and provided funding for scientists outside the company working in the field.

Bioelectronic remedies attach battery-powered implants the size of a grain of rice or smaller to individual nerves to correct faulty electrical signals between the nervous system and the body’s organs.

GSK believes altering these nerve signals could open up the airways of asthma sufferers, reduce inflammation in the gut from Crohn’s disease and treat patients with a range of other chronic ailments such as arthritis. So far, the implants have only been tested on animals but the aim is to produce treatments that supplement or replace drugs that often come with side-effects.

GSK and Verily, renamed from Google Life Sciences in December, said their collaboration would combine GSK’s drug development and understanding of disease biology with Verily’s expertise in miniature electronics, data and software for clinical purposes. The new company will initially employ about 30 scientists, engineers and doctors.

An artist’s impression of a closeup of a bioelectronic implant ‘cuff’ wrapped around a bundle of nerves. Photograph: GSK/PA

Kris Famm, GSK’s head of bioelectronics, said an advantage of bioelectronics would be that researchers should be able to apply it to more diseases as the technology develops. He said working with Verily would speed up this process and that he hoped to conduct the first tests on humans within three years.

Famm said: “We have to figure out how to interface devices with the small nerves in our bodies to find a new way to deliver therapies. We will build the tiny devices that lie at the centre of bringing these treatments to potential.

“The smaller the devices the less they will need to be charged and the more precise they are, and the more attractive this will be as an intervention. Hopefully in 10 years there will be a treatment option where your doctor will say ‘Why don’t you go for bioelectronic?’, and a surgeon will do a little procedure and it will help the organ to do what it should be doing.”

Moncef Slaoui, GSK’s chairman of global vaccines, will chair the new company’s board, which will also include Verily’s chief executive, Andrew Conrad, and Famm.

Galvani will be named after Luigi Aloisio Galvani, an 18th-century scientist whose study of a frog’s reactions paved the way for the study of neuroscience. The companies hope the joint venture will be in operation by the end of this year once it has been approved by US competition regulators.

GSK said last week it would invest £275m in its UK operations and that Britain remained a good place to do business despite the vote to leave the EU. The company’s chief executive, Sir Andrew Witty, is due to leave in March 2017, making the Galvani venture one of his last deals at the company.



Verily is one of Alphabet’s most important long-term ventures. It is part of the tech giant’s lossmaking “other bets” division that also includes Nest, which develops household products connected to the internet.

Brian Otis, Verily’s chief technology officer, said: “This is an ambitious collaboration allowing GSK and Verily to combine forces and have a huge impact on an emerging field. 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 miniaturised technologies.”