Within ten years, curing some cancers outright and managing others as long-term conditions is an achievable ambition, J&J Chairman and CEO Joaquin Duato said, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Joaquin Duato made the comments at a CEO summit in London, where he also said AI is already helping J&J develop medicines faster
Jeff Schear / Getty Images
Within ten years, curing some cancers outright and managing others as long-term conditions is an achievable ambition, J&J Chairman and CEO Joaquin Duato said, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Duato made the remarks on Wednesday at the WSJ Leadership Institute CEO Summit in London. Eradicating cancer entirely and helping people live longer, healthier lives represents the company's ultimate goal, Duato added.
Reaching the top spot in oncology by 2030 is among J&J's stated targets, with deals in the pipeline expected to bring new cancer treatment platforms into the company's portfolio over the next several years, according to the Journal. On the technology front, Duato said AI has begun accelerating J&J's drug development process, though how much financial benefit the company will ultimately realize from it remains unclear.
The comments came two days after J&J agreed to acquire Firefly Bio, Inc. for $1 billion in cash, expanding its cancer drug pipeline with a platform designed to treat tumors that have resisted conventional therapies. At the center of the deal is Firefly's Firelink platform, which is designed to deliver protein-degrading drugs inside cancer cells by attaching them to antibodies — a strategy intended to reduce the damage to healthy tissue associated with existing treatments. The platform targets tumors driven by a mutation in a gene known as KRAS, the company said.
"KRAS has notoriously been considered an undruggable target and patients with KRAS-driven cancers continue to face limited treatment options with survival measured in months, not years," John Reed, executive vice president of innovative medicine, research and development at Johnson & Johnson $JNJ, said in a statement. "We believe the proprietary Firelink platform will overcome the limitations of current treatments and diversify our pipeline with preclinical candidates for treating multiple types of solid tumors."
J&J expects the Firefly Bio deal to close before the end of 2026, pending regulatory approvals and other standard closing conditions, the company said. The acquisition builds on a period of broad momentum in J&J's oncology business. The company reported first-quarter revenue of $24.1 billion, up about 10% from a year earlier, and raised its full-year 2026 sales outlook to a range of $100.3 billion to $101.3 billion. J&J also committed more than $1 billion during the quarter to build a cell therapy manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania.
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