Johnson & Johnson - Index

Johnson & Johnson - report - Index

12
Years ago, Chris recalls,
he told a counselor
about his dreams for
the future: a family of
his own and a steady
job. “Look at me now:
I have both,” says the
43-year-old Oklahoman, beaming at wife
Liz, their two sons and Gizmo, the family dog.
This achievement was no easy task for Chris, who was
diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 1985. All the
medications his physicians tried left him feeling
“lifeless,” he recalls. So when Chris was doing
well, he’d stop taking them, believing he was
cured. “I could always tell when Chris had gone
off his medication,” says Liz. “I’d find him sitting
in the dark. He’d be agitated and trying to make
the voices stop entering his head.”
Then things changed. In 2005, Chris
enrolled in a clinical trial for a new medication,
INVEGA ® (paliperidone) Extended-Release
Tablets. “When I started taking it, the chattering
in my head stopped,” he says, “and I became a
better-functioning person.”
A 50-YEAR QUEST While Chris’s success is not
typical of all patients, INVEGA ® represents the
latest achievement in a story that began more
than 50 years ago with Dr. Paul Janssen and a
small team of scientists in a Belgian laboratory.
They sought to improve treatments for schizophrenia
patients—the favored options at the
time, delivered with the best intentions, involved electric shock
therapy, straitjackets, lobotomy and insulin injections.
The idea of pharmaceutical treatments for schizophrenia
was new when Janssen Pharmaceutica N.V. was founded in 1953.
Scientists set to work and identified a new chemical family of
drugs, which led to the synthesis of HALDOL ® (haloperidol) in
1958. HALDOL ® defined the state of the art and played a critical
role in allowing patients to begin leaving institutional care for
treatment in their home communities. Still, scientists sought
better treatment for more of schizophrenia’s symptoms.
O U R C A R I N G T R A N S F O R M S :
Minds and Lives
INVEGA ®
(paliperidone)
Extended-Release
Tablets represents
the latest
achievement
in a story that
began more
than 50 years
ago with
Dr. Paul Janssen
and a small
team of
scientists.
In the 1970s, Janssen scientist Josee Leysen, Ph.D.,
discovered the role that serotonin receptors play in schizophrenia’s
mood and sensory-perception symptoms. Explains
Dr. Leysen, who has spent 35 years in drug discovery and development
at Janssen Pharmaceutica N.V.: “Once we understood
the significance of these receptors, we could then develop
compounds that would interact with them and have a positive
effect on the behavior of schizophrenia patients.”
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT An important discovery was
made in 1984, when RISPERDAL ® (risperidone), which treats
more of the symptoms of schizophrenia, was first produced.
Further developed, studied and then approved by regulators,
the drug emerged a little more than 10 years ago as a first-inclass,
innovative treatment. More than 10 million people have
since used RISPERDAL ® to relieve symptoms of schizophrenia.
There was a new problem, however.
“Patients would begin feeling better, and they
would stop taking their medications or miss
doses,” says Staf Van Reet, Ph.D., who led the
former Janssen Research Foundation following
Dr. Janssen’s retirement. The Janssen solution:
encapsulated risperidone molecules that were
released once injected into muscle. The result
was RISPERDAL ® CONSTA ® (risperidone) Long-
Acting Injection, the first and only long-acting
(two weeks) atypical antipsychotic approved
in the U.S., in 2003.
The Janssen legacy as frontrunners and
trendsetters in the treatment of mental illness
was reinforced. And options keep coming.
The latest, INVEGA ®, was made available in
2007. It uses patented OROS ® technology to
control the release of medicine in one dose
over a 24-hour period, allowing patients to
avoid taking multiple tablets each day.
Yet another promising solution is on the
horizon. Paliperidone palmitate uses nanoparticle technology
in a long-acting, once-monthly injection that is convenient and
easy to use. A new drug application for paliperidone palmitate
was filed in the U.S. in 2007.
“Chris and patients like him serve as our guiding light,”
says Joseph Palumbo, M.D., Franchise Medical Leader for
Psychiatry at Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research &
Development, LLC. “With every day, our scientists get closer
to understanding the basis of schizophrenia so we can return
dreams to even more patients.”
L I V I N G W I T H S C H I Z O P H R E N I A The hallucinations and heavy sedation that once haunted Chris have been
replaced by the joys of family and a steady job.
J O H N S O N & J O H N S O N 2 0 0 7 A N N U A L R E P O R T