The FINANCIAL -- Johnson & Johnson joined the World Health Organization, 12 other pharmaceutical companies, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the U.S. and U.K. governments, the World Bank , and officials from endemic countries in a new, coordinated action to eliminate or control by the end of the decade 10 neglected tropical diseases that affect more than a billion people in the world, from Johnson & Johnson. 

Johnson & Johnson and other partners announced their commitments at an event today at the Royal College of Physicians in London, and signed onto the “London Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases,” to pledge new levels of collaboration and tracking and reporting of progress.

Johnson & Johnson will work with its partners on pre-clinical research and clinical development of flubendazole, a potential new treatment against parasites that cause lymphatic filariasis and onchocerciasis, two debilitating diseases for which current treatments do not eradicate the parasites.

Elephantiasis and river blindness are among the most difficult to treat tropical diseases and afflict hundreds of millions around the world in Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Central and South America and other tropical countries. The infections are transmitted by insect bites and caused by adult worms that lodge in the body and lay millions of larvae in the lymphatic system, blood and tissues. Current treatments effectively kill only the larvae, not adult worms, and have serious side effects.

Flubendazole, originally discovered and developed by renowned researcher Dr. Paul Janssen, founder of Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Pharmaceutica, is a proven, effective treatment against intestinal parasites. Unlike drugs that are currently used to treat parasitic infections affecting the skin or the eyes, flubendazole has an important advantage: it kills adult parasites rather than just their larvae. However, in its current formulation, which is not absorbable, it is effective only against parasites in the stomach and intestines, but does not reach parasites lodged in blood and tissues.

Working in collaboration with other pharmaceutical partners, Johnson & Johnson will contribute scientific, supply assistance and technical expertise to Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative to reformulate flubendazole to enhance its bioavailability in blood and tissues and conduct pre-clinical testing. The pre-clinical work was supported by a Gates Foundation grant to DNDi. Assuming the pre-clinical development is successful, Johnson & Johnson has agreed to co-fund clinical development and to collaborate with partners on clinical trials to develop the reformulated flubendazole. Johnson & Johnson will also obtain regulatory approval for this compound.

In addition, through Children Without Worms, Johnson & Johnson will extend its donation of mebendazole, a deworming medication, to treat children with intestinal worms. Since starting CWW, a partnership between Johnson & Johnson and The Task Force for Global Health that supports global efforts to reduce the burden of parasitic infections in children, Johnson & Johnson has donated more than 150 million doses of mebendazole.  In 2010, as part of the Millennium Development Goals commitment, the company quadrupled the donation of mebendazole, committing to provide 200 million doses a year for intestinal worms in 30-40 countries through 2015. Today, it is extending this commitment through 2020.

Together with the 400 million doses of albendazole donated by GlaxoSmithKline, this will have huge impact on treating the more than 600 million children targeted by the World Health Organization.These commitments build on Johnson & Johnson’s decades of scientific and philanthropic collaboration that has brought new research and financial resources to bear against diseases of the developing world, including a comprehensive effort launched in 2010 to improve the health of as many as 120 million women and children each year in developing countries by 2015.

Since then, Johnson & Johnson has laid a strong foundation for measurable impact in several areas to reduce mortality in women and children, including: expanding health information for mothers over mobile phones, helping to increase the number of safe births, doubling donations of treatments for intestinal worms in children, helping to ensure that no child is born with HIV, and furthering research and development of new medicines for HIV and tuberculosis.

Beyond the commitment to women’s and children’s health, Johnson & Johnson is building alliances in prevention, aligning with the United Nations Secretary General’s call-to-action to address the major causes of chronic, non-communicable diseases globally.In the last decade, Johnson & Johnson and its operating companies have provided more than $4.3 billion in grants, product donations and patient assistance that have touched the lives of men, women and children throughout the world.

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