An artist’s impression of a bioelectronic implant ‘cuff’ wrapped around a bundle of nerves.
Credit: GSK/PA

Britain’s biggest drugmaker, GlaxoSmithKline, under pressure to improve its development pipeline and financial performance, is pinning its hopes on a radical new approach: “electroceuticals”.

Also called bioelectronics, the idea is that tiny electronic implants will be able to treat a vast range of chronic diseases, such as diabetes, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), arthritis, hypertension and other heart conditions, and gastrointestinal diseases.

A year after GSK teamed up with Google’s parent company, Alphabet, to set up Galvani Bioelectronics, Kris Famm, who runs the venture, is confident that an implantable device capable of altering electrical impulses in the body is within reach.

Several teams of academics are competing for a $1m (£770,000) prize promised by Galvani by racing to develop an implant that can record, stimulate and block neural signals, and are testing prototypes in animals. Galvani has struck more than 50 partnerships to speed up the development of bioelectronics, but is also working on […]