Despite tremendous challenges facing the pharmaceutical industry, it continues with its commitment to innovation and the discovery of novel drugs to address unmet medical needs. Indeed, medicinal chemists face a challenge of their own. Trying to survive in a changing environment where pharma is focusing on biologics drug candidates will require chemists to adapt.

CHEManager International asked R&D experts of chemical and pharmaceutical companies to elaborate on their research strategy and share their opinion with our readers. In detail, we interviewed professionals ranging from CEOs to heads of R&D and process development about:

The crucial success factors in chemical and pharmaceutical research.

Stef L.E. Heylen: Œ Collaboration plays a central role in our business today. The one sentence we use most often to describe ourselves is: We collaborate with the world for the health of everyone in it. We’ve forged hundreds of partnerships with academic institutions, advocacy organizations and companies of all sizes.

Through our four Johnson & Johnson innovation centers, we’ve created new and open innovation models. To find the best science and technology around the world, we’re collaborating with entrepreneurs and scientists through 700 deals as part of our efforts to solve the greatest health-care needs of our time.

“We envision …
new collaborations to
intervene and prevent
diseases before
symptoms even appear.”

Stef L.E. Heylen,
COO,
Janssen R&D

We are also collaborating in the largest public-private partnership in life sciences worldwide, the EU’s Innovative Medicines Initiative. In addition, our company was a founding member of TransCelerate BioPharma, a nonprofit organization with a mission to collaborate across the biopharmaceutical industry to identify and implement solutions to drive the efficient, effective and high-quality delivery of new medicines.

Recently we greatly increased our efforts to actively engage patients and seek their input at every stage, from development through commercialization. And, as appropriate, we’re working much more closely with regulatory authorities to get new medicines to patients in need. For example, by collaborating with regulatory authorities we were able to greatly accelerate our development of Imbruvica because we and regulatory authorities recognized how urgent the need was for patients.

We are also able to accelerate our development of new medicines through close collaboration of Janssen colleagues and external business partners around the world, enabling us to develop new medicines 24 hours a day.

Challenges and changes affecting the work of R&D chemists in the future.

Stef L.E. Heylen:  Ž We expect collaboration will play an even more important role for Janssen in the future. For example, with advances in science and technology, we envision a future where we will be able to forge new collaborations to intervene and prevent diseases before symptoms even appear.