As the biopharmaceutical world got ready for the annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, Johnson & Johnson Innovation expanded its global incubators into Israel and entered into multiple early-stage deals in several disease areas. Although it was not the only Big Pharma to do so, it was the most prolific as the sector continues to look outside its walls for innovation. AbbVie, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Novartis, and Roche also each entered into early-stage deals with biotech companies.

These types of deals have become invaluable for newly established and smaller biotechs, providing them the opportunity to validate their technology and benefit from their partners’ business know-how. At the same time, they allow the Big Pharma to tap into a wide variety of scientific expertise with minimal risk at an early stage.

Johnson & Johnson Innovation will collaborate with Israel’s Office of the Chief Scientist and other industry partners to establish a new biotech incubator near Israel’s Weizmann Science Park, its fifth incubator modeled on the growing success of Janssen Labs in San Diego. These incubators, which include Montreal-based Neomed, Toronto-based MaRS Innovation, the San Francisco-based partnership with QB3, and Boston-based LabCentral, are tasked with fueling entrepreneurship by providing lab space, scientific expertise, and funding for promising research ideas coming out of academia and small companies.

The Israeli incubator is a public-private partnership among not only Johnson & Johnson Innovation, its venture arm Johnson & Johnson Development and the Office of the Chief Scientist, but also Takeda Pharmaceutical and OrbiMed Israel Partners. The new incubator is expected to be operational in early 2014.

“The formation of the new biotechnology incubator in Israel is the product of an important collaboration between government, industry, and venture capital that demonstrates a multi-partner approach in practice,” says Patrick Verheyen, head of Johnson & Johnson Innovation, London. “The collaboration provides a unique platform to support and advance new companies with not only funding, but also strategic advice from both venture capital and industry pharmaceutical development experts.”

Johnson & Johnson Innovation also announced eight new research and development collaborations over the past few weeks with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and seven biotech companies: California-based Assembly Pharmaceuticals, Nodality, and SutroVax; London-based TopiVert; Maryland-based Intrexon; Massachusetts-based Scholar Rock; and Netherlands-based Bioceros.

Johnson & Johnson Innovation opened three innovation centers in 2012 in California, Boston, and London, and will be opening a center in Shanghai this year. The recently announced deals are truly collaborative, leveraging both partners knowledge about specific biologic pathways and disease areas, says Robert Urban, head of Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Boston. “This approach offers the potential to make strong research decisions that can ultimately support company and program success,” he says.
The new deals cover a wide range of disease areas and consumer products. J&J unit Janssen Biotech and J&J Innovation will collaborate with MD Anderson to establish a translational oncology program to enable the personalization of immunotherapies for various cancers. The deal with synthetic biology company Intrexon involves the development of new skin and hair products.

Janssen Biotech and J&J Innovation will work with newly launched Scholar Rock to discover and develop novel biologics called niche activators that target TGF-beta 1 in the immune system and offer a potential new therapeutic approach for autoimmune diseases and cancer immunotherapies.

J&J’s venture arm invested in Assembly Pharmaceuticals, a startup housed at JanssenLabs@QB3, which is focused on therapies for viral infections that have the potential to become curative rather than just suppressive. The collaboration will focus on such treatments for hepatitis B. J&J Innovation teamed up with privately-held Sutro Biopharma to form SutroVax, which will leverage Sutro’s protein syntheisis platform to develop novel vaccines for a broad range of disease targets.

Janssen Biotech and J&J Innovation are collaborating with Nodality to apply its proprietary single Cell Network Profiling technology to immunology R&D programs to improve the development and probability of success of compounds for the treatment of diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease.

In Europe, the pharmaceutical partnered with Dutch biotech Bioceros in which the biotech granted Janssen exclusive global rights to develop a monoclonal antibody directed at an immune checkpoint modulator. Finally, J&J’s venture arm, in collaboration with J&J Innovation, invested in UK-based TopiVert, a company focused on developing topical treatments for inflammatory disease of the gut and eye based on narrow spectrum kinase inhibitor technology.

The idea behind all these deals is to develop the next generation of breakthrough medical solutions. For J&J it means working with many partners to accelerate the pace of innovation. “Addressing today’s unmet medical needs require accessing the best science in the world and the best minds in the world working on it,” says Paul Stoffels, Chief Scientific Officer and head of pharmaceuticals at J&J.