Cambridge and GSK announce new partnership to advance our understanding of the role of cells and tissues in disease, paving the way for new medical breakthroughs
The collaboration will use state-of-the-art genomics approaches in combination with machine learning methods to advance our scientific understanding of cells and tissues in health and disease.
GSK is investing nearly £10 million in this ground-breaking alliance that brings together the expertise of world-leading researchers from the Teichmann Laboratory at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute with its own world-class scientific and translational capabilities.
The programme builds on the approaches being developed through GSK’s existing five-year, £50 million collaboration with Cambridge, the Cambridge-GSK Translational Immunology Collaboration (CG-TIC).
The Cambridge research team has a longstanding interest in understanding gene regulation and protein interaction and how these relate to immunology. The first ever single-cell genomics experiment was published in 2009 by Cambridge researchers and Sarah Teichmann adopted these technologies to study mammalian immune cells. She went on to pioneer single-cell genomics and data science analysis of human tissues, and in 2016 co-founded the international Human Cell Atlas project, a global effort to map all the cells in the human body.
Professor Bertie Gottgens, Director of the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute (CSCI) said: “In parallel, CSCI delivered landmark single‑cell studies illuminating embryonic development, and so we were absolutely delighted when Sarah joined the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute in 2024. This exciting new collaboration with GSK will broaden the impact of genomics, imaging and data science approaches, leading to better diagnostics and more targeted treatments for a wide range of diseases.”
David Michalovich, VP Translational Sciences, Respiratory, Immunology & Inflammation at GSK said: “I am delighted that we are further expanding our collaboration with Cambridge, bringing together leading academic expertise in single‑cell and spatial technologies with GSK’s R&D capabilities. By embedding cutting‑edge single‑cell approaches and multimodal data integration into our translational biomarker strategies, we will generate deeper biological insights and with the aim to accelerate delivery of our pipeline, and ultimately, of improving outcomes for patients with unmet medical needs.”
Read more about this pioneering collaboration in GSK’s Behind the Science magazine.