GlaxoSmithKline funds Anglo-Indian cancer research

Medicine giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Oxford University are to collaborate to establish India’s first cancer research network, it has been announced.

The project, which will receive funding for three years from GSK and will be co-ordinated by Oxford’s Department of Clinical Pharmacology, will specialise in disorders that are more prevalent on the sub-continent than in Europe, such as gall bladder cancers. It will work through India’s existing cancer centres.

Several of India’s best senior oncologists will be employed at the centres, which GSK hopes will help assist the firm’s partners in to fight the disease in the country, opening access to new drugs.

“We at Oxford are delighted to lead this unique opportunity between Indian centres of clinical excellence and a research-based company such as GSK,” said professor David Kerr, Rhodes professor of cancer therapeutics and clinical pharmacology at Oxford.

“The aim of Indian network is to build a research infrastructure and workforce capacity that will support the advancement of novel anti-cancer therapeutics from the laboratory into the clinic and to test their promise in each stage of clinical trials”.

The centres are located in Bangalore, New Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Kerala and Ahmedabad.

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