GSK CEO Unveils Openness Efforts

Speaking at the Wellcome Trust in London last week, GlaxoSmithKline CEO Andrew Witty announced three initiatives that he says advance the firm’s commitment to openness. The British drug firm has screened its library of 2 million compounds and is making freely available about 200 molecules with signs of activity against tuberculosis. The company will spend about $8 million to double funding at its “open lab” in Tres Cantos, Spain, where independent scientists can research diseases of the developing world. And it will create a system that enables researchers to access detailed, anon­ymized patient data from clinical trials of its approved and discontinued drugs.