LONDON (MarketWatch) -- A top scientist from Johnson & Johnson /quotes/zigman/230812/quotes/nls/jnj JNJ -0.33% is in Europe this week to urge pharmaceutical companies, academia and governments there to join a U.S. initiative to combine research efforts to better understand and battle brain disease, one of the most devastating illnesses facing mankind. Husseini Manji, J&J’s global therapeutic area head for neuroscience, has arranged meetings in London and Brussels to promote a new initiative called “One Mind for Research”.
“Neuropsychiatric diseases are the most burdensome to society and among the most complex illnesses,” Manji said in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires. “So business as usual in this disease area isn’t going to work.”
Declining government and corporate funding for research into disorders of the brain poses a serious threat to the development of new medicines for conditions such as schizophrenia, stroke, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety and autism.
Brain disorders represent 35% of the total disease burden in Europe, according to a report published in the European Neurological Review.
But costly failures in late-stage drug trials have persuaded some companies including the U.K.'s GlaxoSmithKline PLC /quotes/zigman/146635/quotes/nls/gsk GSK -0.76% and AstraZeneca PLC /quotes/zigman/134653/quotes/nls/azn AZN -1.20% to close down their research activities into a range of brain diseases such as depression, given the scientific uncertainties in the field and the problems in finding new advances.
“In the past everyone did their own thing. What’s clear now is that if you’re choosing to stay in this disease area, whether you’re an academic researcher or a government researcher or industry researcher, you’re going to go far, far further by trying to work together than in isolation,” Manji said.
Launched in May and backed by former U.S. Congressman Patrick Kennedy, “One Mind for Research” aims to build a global network and data repository of all relevant imaging, genome, and patient records. The initiative wants to pool early stage assets and neuroscience insight to find cures for brain disorders.
“The plan has always been to kick it off in the U.S. and very quickly try and make it at least a trans-Atlantic endeavor, if not a global endeavor,” Manji said.
Manji has been holding talks with counterparts at other large pharmaceutical companies about joint funding efforts with other organizations including the US National Institutes of Health and the EU-led Innovative Medicines Initiative, which funds cross-border corporate and academic work.
The key part of the plan is to have open access at the early stages of R&D.
“Some of it would be completely open so that the data generated is available to everyone to benefit from. This would pertain to what we call pre-competitive research. After that, the race would be on for companies to develop their own products.”
“There’s no question that different companies are sometimes duplicating effort by perhaps looking at and coming up with the same animal model and the same targets. Collaboration could allow us to come up with a better animal model or a better biomarker to predict who’s at risk of Alzheimer’s Disease and so on,” said Manji, who worked at the National Institutes of Health before joining J&J.
“Our knowledge base and data are largely siloed, and incentives for research and collaboration are lacking. We’re going to learn a lot more about these diseases by breaking down the silos than we would have working in isolation.”
