Tag Archives: GSK

23 & Me (Genetic testing) signs $300 million deal with GSK

Popular DNA Testing Company Signs $300 Million Deal With Big Pharmaceutical Company

It might be time for people to reconsider before they spit in a tube. Online genetic testing services are wildly popular. Many people use services such as 23andMe and Ancestry.com to learn about their ancestral pasts. Many also use these services to gain more profound insights into their biological makeup, which is often used to assess risk for degenerative diseases, such as cancer. This information offers use for more trivial insights, such as a person’s rate of metabolism in concern with substances like caffeine.

Pharmaceutical companies with access to such genetic information would be able to develop new products in more efficient ways.

GlaxoSmithKline, seeking to take advantage of just that, has announced a four year deal with 23andMe that allows them access to everyone’s genetic information for precisely the purposes pertaining to drug research.

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Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) responds to Pandemrix and Narcolepsy

GlaxoSmithKline’s full statement to W5 on Pandemrix

1. A. Studies in Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Norway and Britain have also shown the risk of developing narcolepsy is between seven and 13 times higher in children who were immunized with Pandemrix than in those who were not – What is your response to these findings?

B. Can Pandemrix trigger narcolepsy in children?

Epidemiological data currently available to GSK suggest an increased risk of narcolepsy following vaccination with Pandemrix™ (H1N1). Due to the methodological limitations of the studies, which are retrospective observational studies, further research is needed to determine whether the observed risk is related to the vaccine, environmental effects, genetic factors, other factors or a combination of them. Further research also is needed to evaluate whether there are biologically plausible mechanisms by which vaccination with Pandemrix™ (H1N1) may have triggered narcolepsy in some individuals as no such mechanism has been demonstrated to date.

2. In some jurisdictions Pandemrix is no longer used in people under 20 – what do you think of that decision? Is it justified? Why? Why Not?

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