J&J R&D chief calls for "open innovation"

The head of pharmaceutical R&D at US health care giant Johnson & Johnson has called for a new approach to drug discovery, in what he termed "open  innovation." Speaking to the Wall Street Journal's Health Blog, Paul  Stoffels explained that looking to outside firms for leads before  entering into partnerships with academic centers or biotechnology  companies with the most promising candidates is the way forward for an  industry facing problems relating to blockbuster drug patent expiry  (Marketletters passim).

Dr Stoffels said: "all simple diseases have been solved," adding that  the complexity of next-generation products requires a greater amount of  data and scientific knowledge than can be obtained from a single firm.  He gave the example of two HIV/AIDS therapies, Prezista (darunavir) and  Intelence (etravirine) both developed by J&J unit Janssen-Cilag, which  required a 10-year collaborative effort, after earlier failures in this  disease area.

"Building networks where together with a number of other groups you come  up with solutions to solve different medical needs," he argued, is the  future of the pharmaceutical industry. J&J is already applying a certain  degree of distributed knowledge in its approach to information to  patients, with ventures on-line at Facebook and YouTube (Marketletters  passim).