Cambridge University has been associated with a scandal that has hit drug manufacturers

British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has announced a five-year collaboration with Cambridge University, despite claims that a discontinued version of its heartburn drug causes cancer.

GSK is investing more than £50 million in what is called the Cambridge-GSK Translational Immunology Collaboration (CG-TIC).

The five-year collaboration with the University and its hospitals will be concentrate on “examination of disease, its progression, how patients respond to therapies and the development of biomarkers for rapid diagnosis”, with a special focus on kidney and respiratory diseases.

The news comes after the pharmaceutical giant paid up to $2.2 billion (£1.68 billion) to settle thousands of cases in US courts over claims that a discontinued version of its heartburn drug Zantac caused cancer.

Earlier this month, GSK announced it had reached settlements with ten law firms representing around 80,000 claimants. This represents 93% of the pending cases in the US.

GSK will also pay $70 million to settle a whistleblower complaint by a lab that alleged the drugmaker defrauded the US government by withholding information about Zantac’s cancer risks.

The collaboration will apply a range of new techniques, including AI, machine learning and single-cell technologies to characterize how genes are expressed in individual cells. The collaboration aims to use these techniques to start new trials and early phase trials for new therapies for a range of hard-to-treat kidney and respiratory diseases.

Peter Kyle, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, welcomed the collaboration. He said: “The UK’s life sciences industry is thriving, driving innovation and improving lives. This collaboration between GSK and the University of Cambridge demonstrates our country’s leading research and development capabilities.”

Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, added: “The University is at the heart of Europe’s leading life sciences cluster, where the excellent research and clinical resources of the NHS combine with the talent generated by the many innovative biosciences companies who call Cambridge home.”

“Through this very important collaboration with GSK, Cambridge will be able to drive economic growth for the UK while improving the health of people in this country and around the world,” she continued.

Despite Zantac’s initial success, with annual sales of more than $1 billion after its US launch in 1983, US regulators pulled the drug from shelves in 2020 due to concerns that a key ingredient, ranitidine, could transform into a substance that can cause cancer when exposed to heat. Tens of thousands of lawsuits against the company followed.

In 2019, UK doctors were said to stop prescribing four variants of the drug as a “precautionary measure”.

GSK has not admitted wrongdoing in either case. The company also said in a statement to its investors that while there is “no consistent or reliable evidence” that the drug increases the risk of cancer, the payouts “remove significant financial uncertainty.”

A drug called Zantac 360 that does not contain the cancer-causing ingredient ranitidine is still sold today.

GSK’s collaboration with Cambridge University follows last week’s announcement that Cancer Research UK invest £173 million – the charity’s largest grant outside London – to the Cambridge Institute.

When asked about CG-TIC in light of the recent GSK agreements, a University spokesperson said: “This important collaboration represents an opportunity to help patients in the UK and around the world who are battling complex diseases.”