Organon, AstraZeneca, GSK and Lundbeck enter UK consortium agreement with P1vital

P1vital has signed a consortium agreement with a number of leading pharmaceutical firms, including AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Lundbeck and Schering-Plough subsidiary Organon.

This consortium was established with the aim of founding and validating healthy volunteer models for central nervous system (CNS) experimental medicine.

According to the terms of the agreement, all companies involved will bear the costs of a series of studies over a three-year period to discover the sensitivity of healthy volunteers and determine their ability to detect the efficacy of innovative compounds in this area.

Work will be conducted at a number of UK sites, including the University of Bristol, Cardiff University, the University of Manchester, the University of Oxford and the Institute of Psychiatry.

Robert Alexander, vice-president of psychiatry clinical pharmacology and discovery medicine at GSK, said: “The GSK Psychiatry Centre of Excellence for Drug Discovery is committed to the development of innovative treatments for psychiatric disorders.”

He added that the firm is excited about joining the consortium, which it believes will help in the development of its own drug candidates.

P1vital notes that the global market for CNS compounds for the year from March 2004 amounted to $59.6 billion (30.4 billion pounds), a 14 per cent increase on the previous 12 months.