Our Belgian branches are responsible for a number of the core activities of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Group. Various departments in Belgium are, in fact, worldwide “Centers of Excellence” (CoE’s) in their area of expertise.

The search for medicines that treat unmet medical needs continues to form the main thrust of our research activities. This means that we focus primarily on those disease areas for which no effective treatments are available yet.

Our main therapeutic areas are:

• Neurosciences
• Infectious diseases
• Immunology
• Oncology
• Cardiovascular conditions

In the future, the research and disovery center in Beerse will continue to concentrate on research into substances for psychiatry, neurology and infectious diseases, three areas in which we have been a world leader for many years now. In the area of cancer, we will also continue to carry out basic research in Beerse, which is the worldwide discovery center of Janssen.

Our products are the result of a collaboration between the several research activities.  The pie chart here below gives an overview of worldwide sales for the major therapeutic areas.

The different steps from molecule to medicine:

Research & Development
Basic research
Our researchers seek out a target that they need to hit in order to be able to combat a disease successfully. Then they try to find a molecule that has an effect on this target.

Pre-clinical development
The most promising molecules are further developed to potential drugs. These are subjected to further testing in test tubes, on cell cultures (in vitro), or in living test animals (in vivo).

Clinical research
Is the potential drug safe enough to test on people? We then start the clinical studies with healthy volunteers (phase I) and patients (phases II and III). We examine the safety and effectiveness of the potential drug, and how it behaves in the body (intake, distribution, excretion).

Registration
Only registered drugs may be brought onto the market. We therefore submit a file to the government containing all the necessary data relating to the basic, pre-clinical and clinical research.

Production and commercialisation
The production starts running at full speed after the registration.

On the one hand we have the chemical production (Geel) that produces big volumes of active ingredients of a drug. On the other hand we have the pharmaceutical production (Beerse) that mixex the active compound with other ingredients which results in a final product.

Meanwhile, we inform the medical profession, and submit a price and an application for reimbursement to the government. The medicine is distributed to our clients as soon as we have received the green light. We continue to follow up accurately the safety of the drug worldwide, even after it has been launched in several countries.

Support services
In order to support the smooth discovery, development and production of drugs, our company provides a host of other services, such as the Administration, Communication, Finance, General Technical Services and Engineering, Human Resources, IT Support, Legal Services, Maintenance, Prevention Services, Purchasing, Quality Assurance, etc.