- Email: [email protected]
Paul Janssen
OBITUARY
Obituary
Paul Janssen Founder of a pharmaceutical company that created many drugs including haloperidol, fentanyl, and risperidone. Born Sept 12, 1926, in Turnhout, Belgium; died of undisclosed causes on Nov 11, 2003, aged 77 years, while attending a meeting in Rome.
aul Janssen knew from a young age that he wanted to combine chemistry with medicine. His inspiration was his father, Constant Janssen, a family practitioner who, in 1933, began importing compounds from Hungary-based companies to his own company in Turnhout, Belgium. Constant Janssen would eventually leave his practice to develop and market his own products. Both Constant and Paul recognised that while most new drugs being produced at the time were merely new combinations, the way forward in drug development was the identification and synthesis of new compounds. So when Paul Janssen finished his military service in 1953, he set up a laboratory on the third floor of his parents’ company. The enterprise would eventually become Janssen Pharmaceutica, the multinational drug firm that is now a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson and is responsible for 71 medications from haloperidol to ketoconazole. The first drug launched by Janssen, in 1955, was ambucetamide for menstrual pain. It was followed by other drugs such as haloperidol (1959), fentanyl (1963), pimozide (1970), mebendazole (1972), loperamide (1973), and risperidone (1993). Janssen recalled the development of haloperidol in an interview last year with European College of Neuropsychopharmacology Matters. He had been inspired by the example of an amphetamine-intoxicated cyclist. “Even when he was pulled off his bike and congratulated by a reporter, he tried to continue cycling” Janssen said. It was obvious, he added, that “finding a treatment for amphetamine intoxication would provide a cure for paranoid schizophrenia”. The Janssen researchers found that mice with induced amphetamine intoxication responded to haloperidol. “The next step was to test the effect on a human being” Janssen said. “Before then I had never spoken to a psychiatrist because the only one I had encountered at university was quite mad himself—making such a show of his lecture that I decided to steer clear of them. This time round I was lucky enough to meet the very capable Dr Bobon in Liege who introduced me to a 16 year old boy, recently admitted to his clinic and showing all the symptoms of paranoid
P
Ivan Oransky e-mail: [email protected]
schizophrenia. Dr Bobon agreed to give him haloperidol and he calmed down; the effect was amazing.” The patient would continue on no more than 1 mg of the drug per day and would eventually graduate in architecture, marry, and father two children. However, he relapsed when his father, fearing the development of tardive dyskinesia, stopped the medication. The company grew rapidly, and in 1962, its 340 employees became part of Johnson & Johnson, although Janssen’s several subsidiaries remained under his direction. It now has 40 affiliates around the world and employs more than 23 000 people. Janssen said last year that the objective of the company had remained the same for 25 years, but that “the circumstances in which we try to achieve this, however, have changed enormously”, citing high costs of drug development. Such costs are a shame, he said “especially for people with a serious illness not common enough to make it cost-effective for the pharmaceutical industry to invest in finding a cure”. He added: “I am 75 years old so old enough to get angry about this. Especially when I think of all the drugs that are not being developed.” Janssen studied at the Faculté Notre Dame de la Paix in Namur, Belgium. He earned his medical degree from Ghent University in 1951, after studying medicine at Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium. While completing his military service near Cologne, Germany, he studied pharmacology and chemistry at Cologne University, where he would be a part-time assistant until 1952. In 1956, for his thesis Compounds of the R 79 type he earned a Teaching Certificate for Higher Education in Pharmacology from Ghent, where he worked with Corneille Heymans, winner of the 1938 Nobel Prize in medicine. Janssen, who held more than 100 patents and wrote more than 850 scientific papers, stepped down from senior posts at the company in 1991, but remained an active adviser. His most recent research was into a compound for the treatment of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and into a new class of more affordable HIV-1 drugs. He is survived by his wife, Dora Arts Janssen; two sons; three daughters; and 13 grandchildren.
THE LANCET • Vol 363 • January 17, 2004 • www.thelancet.com
For personal use. Only reproduce with permission from The Lancet.
251
Obituary
Paul Janssen Founder of a pharmaceutical company that created many drugs including haloperidol, fentanyl, and risperidone. Born Sept 12, 1926, in Turnhout, Belgium; died of undisclosed causes on Nov 11, 2003, aged 77 years, while attending a meeting in Rome.
aul Janssen knew from a young age that he wanted to combine chemistry with medicine. His inspiration was his father, Constant Janssen, a family practitioner who, in 1933, began importing compounds from Hungary-based companies to his own company in Turnhout, Belgium. Constant Janssen would eventually leave his practice to develop and market his own products. Both Constant and Paul recognised that while most new drugs being produced at the time were merely new combinations, the way forward in drug development was the identification and synthesis of new compounds. So when Paul Janssen finished his military service in 1953, he set up a laboratory on the third floor of his parents’ company. The enterprise would eventually become Janssen Pharmaceutica, the multinational drug firm that is now a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson and is responsible for 71 medications from haloperidol to ketoconazole. The first drug launched by Janssen, in 1955, was ambucetamide for menstrual pain. It was followed by other drugs such as haloperidol (1959), fentanyl (1963), pimozide (1970), mebendazole (1972), loperamide (1973), and risperidone (1993). Janssen recalled the development of haloperidol in an interview last year with European College of Neuropsychopharmacology Matters. He had been inspired by the example of an amphetamine-intoxicated cyclist. “Even when he was pulled off his bike and congratulated by a reporter, he tried to continue cycling” Janssen said. It was obvious, he added, that “finding a treatment for amphetamine intoxication would provide a cure for paranoid schizophrenia”. The Janssen researchers found that mice with induced amphetamine intoxication responded to haloperidol. “The next step was to test the effect on a human being” Janssen said. “Before then I had never spoken to a psychiatrist because the only one I had encountered at university was quite mad himself—making such a show of his lecture that I decided to steer clear of them. This time round I was lucky enough to meet the very capable Dr Bobon in Liege who introduced me to a 16 year old boy, recently admitted to his clinic and showing all the symptoms of paranoid
P
Ivan Oransky e-mail: [email protected]
schizophrenia. Dr Bobon agreed to give him haloperidol and he calmed down; the effect was amazing.” The patient would continue on no more than 1 mg of the drug per day and would eventually graduate in architecture, marry, and father two children. However, he relapsed when his father, fearing the development of tardive dyskinesia, stopped the medication. The company grew rapidly, and in 1962, its 340 employees became part of Johnson & Johnson, although Janssen’s several subsidiaries remained under his direction. It now has 40 affiliates around the world and employs more than 23 000 people. Janssen said last year that the objective of the company had remained the same for 25 years, but that “the circumstances in which we try to achieve this, however, have changed enormously”, citing high costs of drug development. Such costs are a shame, he said “especially for people with a serious illness not common enough to make it cost-effective for the pharmaceutical industry to invest in finding a cure”. He added: “I am 75 years old so old enough to get angry about this. Especially when I think of all the drugs that are not being developed.” Janssen studied at the Faculté Notre Dame de la Paix in Namur, Belgium. He earned his medical degree from Ghent University in 1951, after studying medicine at Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium. While completing his military service near Cologne, Germany, he studied pharmacology and chemistry at Cologne University, where he would be a part-time assistant until 1952. In 1956, for his thesis Compounds of the R 79 type he earned a Teaching Certificate for Higher Education in Pharmacology from Ghent, where he worked with Corneille Heymans, winner of the 1938 Nobel Prize in medicine. Janssen, who held more than 100 patents and wrote more than 850 scientific papers, stepped down from senior posts at the company in 1991, but remained an active adviser. His most recent research was into a compound for the treatment of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and into a new class of more affordable HIV-1 drugs. He is survived by his wife, Dora Arts Janssen; two sons; three daughters; and 13 grandchildren.
THE LANCET • Vol 363 • January 17, 2004 • www.thelancet.com
For personal use. Only reproduce with permission from The Lancet.
251