Print“To solve today's greatest public health challenges, it's essential that we emphasize the needs of the developing world in equal measure to those of the developed world, says Paul Stoffels, CSO for Johnson & Johnson and Janssen's worldwide chairman.”
Janssen Pharmaceutica is creating a new business unit to work on some of the biggest challenges facing Big Pharma in emerging markets.
The new group, Janssen Global Public Health, will unify the company's efforts to make progress on access to medicines, innovative pricing models, and research & development of products designed for resource-limited countries.
“To solve today's greatest public health challenges, it's essential that we emphasize the needs of the developing world in equal measure to those of the developed world,” says Paul Stoffels, CSO for Johnson & Johnson and Janssen's worldwide chairman.
The effort represents an active move by the company to both secure its place in markets that will prove important to its future sales and to work on its own terms in markets where compulsory licensing and counterfeiting could otherwise undercut its ability to maintain the quality, integrity, and pricing of its products.
The Global Public Health group is expected to build a sustainable platform through which to develop and introduce Janssen's growing portfolio of medicines, diagnostics, and services. It will also work to develop results-based financing models to be integrated with Janssen's global access and partnerships program and bring its efforts into alignment with payers that are putting a growing focus on outcomes.
Among the assets to be managed by the new program are Sirturo, a recently approved therapy for multi-drug resistant tuberculosis; the experimental long-acting formulation of the HIV medicine rilpivirine; and a microbicidal ring designed to prevent the sexual transmission of HIV. The group will also manage a non-exclusive, royalty-free preclinical data sharing agreement between Janssen and the non-profit Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative for the preclinical research of a reformulated form of flubendazole, a potential new treatment against parasites that cause elephantiasis and river blindness, two of the most difficult-to-treat neglected tropical diseases.
“The world's major global health challenges call for products and practices designed specifically to address the real world needs of people living with disease in underserved regions of the world,” says Wim Parys, Global Head Infectious Diseases at Janssen. “Through Janssen GPH, we hope to create more targeted medicines for treating and preventing disease.”
January 24, 2014
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-janssen_puts_focus_on_global_public_health.html
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