Public-private consortium launched to speed preclinical development

GlaxoSmithKline plc (LSE:GSK; NYSE:GSK), the University of California San Francisco and two national research laboratories established Accelerating Therapeutics for Opportunities in Medicine (ATOM), a public-private consortium that seeks to hasten preclinical development of cancer candidates. The consortium, which includes Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and NCI's Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, hopes to reduce to one year from six the time it takes to move a program from target identification to clinical testing.

Using shared data and supercomputing power, ATOM's drug discovery platform will allow for predictive safety and efficacy modeling in multiple molecules simultaneously. The group will focus on precision oncology first, but said its approach may benefit drug discovery in other indications...