Janssen establishes innovative public-private consortium for inflammatory bowel disease research

Janssen Research & Development, a unit of US health care giant Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) has established a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the US Naval Medical Research Center (NMRC), Prometheus Laboratories Inc. (Prometheus), Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota (Mayo Clinic), Centre Hospitalier Regional Universitaire (CHRU) de Lille, France (Lille) and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (Mount Sinai).

The consortium's goal is to identify the biological triggers that cause or lead to the development of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). This first-of-its-kind, Pre-IBD Consortium brings together leading academic and industry experts to identify disease interception and prevention strategies for Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis (UC). No financial terms of the accord were revealed.

"The consortium has been designed as a partnership of equals to leverage the distinct skills brought by each member, and is a model of academic-industry collaboration where intellectual property is shared for the ultimate benefit of patients and advancing science," said Francisco Leon, head of immunology translational medicine at Janssen. "NMRC provides overall coordination and microbiology expertise; Janssen brings systems pharmacology and proteomic biomarker capabilities, as well as translational informatics and knowledge management through information technology; Prometheus contributes its unique antibody and serum biomarker expertise; Mount Sinai's world-class computational capabilities allow for integration and mining of big data; and Lille and Mayo Clinic experts will lead the interpretation of the data," Dr Leon noted.