Johnson & Johnson has ramped up its ambitious project to learn how to predict who will develop particular diseases and find therapies to prevent or stop the disease early, when it’s most treatable.
Since the health care giant announced its groundbreaking project in February 2015, it’s expanded to include two dozen research programs with partners – in government, universities, patient advocacy groups and other drug and diagnostic test companies. Their expertise and resources should speed discoveries and allow Johnson & Johnson to spread its funding across more ventures.
On Tuesday, J&J will give an update and announce the latest two projects. They’re meant to identify which pregnant women will develop gestational diabetes, and to identify and treat people at risk of or in early stages of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the third-leading cause of death worldwide.
“We’ve really been trying to introduce a new paradigm,” the J&J project head, Ben Wiegand, told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview. “We’re moving from disease care to health care.”
Wiegand said the mapping of the human genome and other recent scientific advances have made that goal feasible. J&J’s “Disease Interception Accelerator” now is working on multiple studies in Type 1 and gestational diabetes, cataracts and vision-damaging presbyopia, depression in women during and after pregnancy, lung disorders and cancers of the cervix, mouth and throat caused by human papilloma virus.