GlaxoSmithKline to publish Clinical data online

GlaxoSmithKline has announced that it will release clinical trials data onto its website.

(PRWEB) June 26, 2004 -- GlaxoSmithKline will publish clinical trial results for marketed medicines on the Internet, the London-based firm said on Friday, as it seeks to fight back from a lawsuit claiming it suppressed negative data on one of its drugs.

Europe's biggest drugmaker said it would create an electronic database to be called the GSK Clinical Trial Register, which it plans to make accessible very soon to doctors and the public.

A Glaxo spokesman said the new database had been under consideration and in development for several months, and was not in direct response to a lawsuit brought by Elliot Spitzer.

"This is another positive step toward providing important and necessary information to doctors and the public," Spitzer said of Glaxo's decision to create the database.

Merck and Co. Inc. on Friday said it was in favor of including results of all late-stage clinical trials of medicines on an existing government database.

Marc Rubin, a former Glaxo VP and now head of development and a board member of German drugmaker Schering AG, said his company was "very open to the concept" of including trial results in such a database. "But we need to make sure the data is actually useful and not misused," Rubin said.