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[The joint venture] will investigate devices that directly modify nerve transmission, which is something that I don't think any large drug company has ever put money into – certainly not the $700 million that GSK has announced. But it's not like they'd ever spend $700 million on something that's not going to work out – oh, OK.[/sarcasm] But let's try to assess this deal on its own merits.

[...] GSK has been putting money into the field for three years or so, and they say that they have a list of candidate nerves that directly affect tissues involved with disease, and whose signals they're planning on either enhancing or blocking. I can certainly how that could work, but I can certainly see how it could not work, too (and there are plenty of disease processes that are not necessarily driven by nerve impulses). The company says that they're going after diabetes first[.]