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NEW YORK, NY, December 6, 2004 - Johnson & Johnson today announced a grant of $5 million to Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) to fund a special scholars program focusing on acceleration of drug discovery and therapeutics for brain-related diseases such as schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease, and epilepsy.
The grant will establish the Paul Janssen Scholars Program in Translational Neuroscience. The new partnership honors the life and work of Dr. Paul Janssen, who died last year. Dr. Janssen is credited with laying the foundation for more than 80 medicines that continue to be used widely throughout the world.
"This important grant will help Columbia to do one of the things we excel at-transforming, or translating, pre-clinical discoveries into knowledge that is practical for drug development. Just as importantly, observations derived from daily patient care are played back and will help redirect our therapeutically-focused basic research," says Gerald D. Fischbach, Executive Vice President and Dean of Columbia University Medical Center. "Scientists are making great progress in the laboratory, but that knowledge is not converted quickly enough into clinical use."
This partnership between Johnson & Johnson, the world's most comprehensive and broadly based manufacturer of health care products and related services, and CUMC, a pre-eminent center for research, medical education and patient care, builds a valuable bridge to support the work of translational researchers.
An important part of the Johnson & Johnson grant, $3 million, focuses on young researchers. A rotating two-year Paul Janssen Fellowship in Translational Neuroscience Research will be awarded to a young physician-scientist doing promising work on diseases of the brain and body.
An additional $2 million will provide the Paul Janssen Professorship in Clinical Neuroscience with an endowment for an established researcher. The individual appointed to the professorship will be a practicing clinician who also devotes time to research focused on translational science. The Paul Janssen Professor in Clinical Neuroscience will be dedicated to the translation of basic research into clinical diagnostic tests and new treatments for psychiatric disorders, as well as to study of the effects of the brain on the body and health in general.
"We're proud to honor the memory of Dr. Paul Janssen by providing this grant to Columbia University Medical Center, one of the country's preeminent medical research institutions," said William C. Weldon, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Johnson & Johnson. "Our hope is that this grant will inspire the type of collaborations between bench and bedside that contributed so importantly to Dr. Janssen's discoveries in the neurosciences."
The new contribution is part of a tradition of support from Johnson & Johnson to Columbia University Medical Center. Among prominent gifts from the company is the endowed Johnson & Johnson Professorship in Surgery, currently held by Eric A. Rose, M.D., chairman of the Department of Surgery and associate dean for translational research. The company has also provided significant research support to CUMC through its Focused Giving program. Managed by Johnson & Johnson's corporate office of Science and Technology, the program was established in 1980 to stimulate exploration in medical science.
In 1953, Dr. Janssen started a fledgling pharmaceutical company in a spare room of his father's import business in Belgium. Talking with a friend one day about a professional cyclist's strange behavior while intoxicated with amphetamines, he made a connection between the cyclist's ranting and the behavior of people with paranoid schizophrenia. His research into a compound that could block the effects of amphetamine in mice was ultimately translated into a compound that revolutionized the treatment of schizophrenia in humans. Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a Johnson& Johnson company, developed from the original company started by Dr. Paul Janssen
One of Dr. Janssen's signature discoveries nearly 50 years ago, HALDOL®, the first highly effective antipsychotic drug, still offers lessons for how translational research is the best hope for developing new therapeutics. In all, Dr Paul Janssen and his associates discovered many innovative medicines in fields as diverse as gastroenterology, psychiatry, neurology, mycology and parasitology, anaesthesia and allergy.
Columbia University Medical Center provides international leadership in basic, pre-clinical and clinical research, medical education, and health care. The medical center trains future leaders in health care and includes the dedicated work of many physicians, scientists, and other health professionals at the College of Physicians & Surgeons, the School of Dental & Oral Surgery, the School of Nursing, the Mailman School of Public Health, the biomedical departments of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and allied research centers and institutions. With a strong history of some of the most important advances and discoveries in medicine, its researchers are taking this drive of innovation into the 21st century to develop novel therapies, cures and advances to address a wide range of critical health conditions.
Johnson & Johnson, with approximately 109,200 employees, is the world's most comprehensive and broadly based manufacturer of health care products, as well as a provider of related services, for the consumer, pharmaceutical and medical devices and diagnostics markets. Johnson & Johnson has more than 200 operating companies in 57 countries, selling products throughout the world.
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