FIND and Janssen Pharmaceutical NV recently developed a new collaborative agreement to make tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis, treatment and care more accessible to patients around the world.
This is the first time that the two companies have partnered to create a formal, strategic partnership concerning the accessibility of tools for TB. Their goal is to make diagnostic tools for the illness as well as multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and post-diagnosis connections to efficient treatments more accessible.
“The growing rates of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis make this complex public health problem an increasingly urgent priority,” Wim Parys, head of R&D for Janssen Global Public Health, said. “We see this innovative collaboration with FIND as a highly effective way to accelerate sustainable solutions in the TB diagnostics to treatment continuum.”
Thanks to the partnership, the two organizations can unite pharmaceutical experience with their experience in improving accessibility to medicines.
“In addition to the many people who are never diagnosed at all, more than one in 10 with a confirmed TB diagnosis never gets started on treatment, while others face unacceptable delays between diagnosis and treatment,” FIND Chief Executive Officer Catharina Boehme said. “To make things worse, most people with MDR-TB are diagnosed only after treatment failure. By partnering with Janssen, we see important opportunities to strengthen the links to effective treatment following diagnosis, and to greatly improve access to diagnosis for drug-resistant TB.”
