GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) plans to invest £40 million ($53 million) in strengthening initiatives in genetic research in the development of new medicines.

The investment expands GSK’s previously announced effort to generate genetic sequencing data from UK Biobank, a health resource. GSK says its commitment will support the sequencing of data from all 500,000 volunteer participants, beyond the first 50,000 subset announced by the company earlier in 2017.

The funding is also expected to support GSK’s Open Targets collaboration with the European Bioinformatics Institute, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, a non-profit British genomics and genetics research institute, Biogen, and Takeda. The collaboration was established in 2014 in Cambridge, UK to make genetic and biological data openly available to help researchers identify and prioritize new targets for developing future medicines.

This follows the launch of the UK government’s Life Sciences Sector Deal, which was announced on December 6, 2017 and which represents a collaboration between the UK government and industry to bring together a number of commitments and investments to the UK. The deal builds on the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy by John Bell, professor of medicine, University of Oxford and chairman of the Office for the Strategic Coordination of Health Research, which was released earlier in 2017 and which provides recommendations to government on the long-term success of the life-sciences sector.

Source: GlaxoSmithKline