JJ gets two approvals
Listen to this articleNew Brunswick-based Johnson & Johnson ended the week with a double dose of good news.
Two of the pharmaceutical giant’s subsidiaries received products approvals from the Food and Drug Administration. The first is a drug to treat HIV. The other is a vascular closure device for use in patients undergoing heart surgery.
The HIV drug, Edurant, is manufactured by J&J’s Raritan-based Tibotec Therapeutics, a division of Centocor Ortho Biotech Inc. The drug was approved for use in combination with other antiretroviral drugs for patients with the HIV-1 virus who have not previously taken an HIV therapy.
The once-daily Edurant belongs to a class of drugs that work by blocking HIV viral replication, thus suppressing the amount of HIV in the blood.
J&J’s new vascular closure device goes by the name ExoSeal and is manufactured the company’s Bridgewater-based subsidiary, Cordis Corp. In a clinical trial, the device was found to speed recovery in patients undergoing diagnostic or interventional coronary/peripheral procedures.
“Based on these results, we believe that use of ExoSeal will benefit patients by shortening the time to ambulation, with a low rate of complications,” said the study’s primary investigator Dr. S. Chiu Wong of New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. “In addition, the device has easy-to-use functionality.”
