The British pharmaceutical giant is working with the U.K. Dementia Research Institute to exploit a “natural randomization” experiment to determine whether 65- and 66-year-olds who received GSK’s shingles vaccine Shingrix have reduced dementia risk.
GSK will take advantage of a fortuitous real-world experiment to study whether its prized shingles vaccine can lower the risk of dementia.
The pharma will partner with the U.K. Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI) for a “first-of-its-kind” dementia study. The project, announced Tuesday and officially titled EPI-ZOSTER-110, will try to draw a link between GSK’s Shingrix, the Recombinant Zoster Vaccine (RZV), and a lowered risk of dementia, using data from the U.K.’s health data ecosystem.
Data from the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) showed that there are about 1.4 million people ages 65 and 66 in that country. The research collaboration will probe the incidence rate of dementia in those people and whether or not they received a GSK shingles vaccine.
This analysis builds off a bit of happenstance that produced a real-world experiment. In September 2023, adults then aged 65 became eligible to receive GSK’s shingles vaccine. Adults aged 66 at that time, however, only became eligible to receive the vaccine when they turned 70, which GSK said created a “natural randomization,” according to the release. The hope is that this randomization will help reinforce retrospective studies that initially suggested a potential link between the vaccine and lowered dementia risk.
In its fourth quarter and full-year 2024 report in February, GSK indicated that it was looking to strike deals in its cancer, respiratory and inflammation portfolios, as revenue from the vaccines dropped from the previous year, including the shingles vaccine that has long been one of GSK’s key products. Shingrix barely held on to blockbuster status with $1.06 billion in sales.
The partnership with the UK DRI marks another in a series of team-ups in dementia research, as the field looks to take treatment beyond Eisai and Biogen’s Leqembi and Eli Lilly’s Kisunla. Late last year, GSK announced a strategic alliance with the Danish biotech Muna Therapeutics, leveraging Muna’s brain transcriptomics dataset to develop potential Alzheimer’s treatments.
The U.K. DRI previously established a postdoctoral research program with Eisai to fund research into dementia-related illnesses.
