GlaxoSmithKline Plc has lured three leading scientists from academia to boost its imaging programme, in a move underlining the growing role of clinical imaging in the development of new drugs. Glaxo, alongside rivals such as Pfizer Inc which is also investing heavily in the area, hopes a better understanding of how drugs work inside the body will a speed development and reduce the industry’s notoriously high rate of product failure. Much of Glaxo’s imaging work will be centred at Imperial College’s Hammersmith Hospital campus in London, where the British-based group is investing 46 million pounds in a new center for magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography and optical imaging. Imperial College and Britain’s Medical Research Council are also plowing 20 million and 9 million pounds respectively into the London center. Paul Matthews, from the University of Oxford, will head up the new clinical-imaging center, when it opens next year and coordinate academic imaging collaborations worldwide. Ed Bullmore, of Cambridge University, has been appointed vice president of experimental medicine and will head the Addenbrooke’s Center for Clinical Investigation in Cambridge, while Marc Laruelle, from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, has been appointed vice president for clinical molecular imaging.