Johnson & Johnson's research reflecting new Washington policies

Health care supplier Johnson & Johnson will focus on new treatments and improved tests for cancer and other diseases for which company perceives unmet needs, like diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV, as well as using new, Washington-supported research techniques to gauge their effectiveness, researchers and executives said at a briefing with analysts, BusinessWeek reports.

Even as several major products have been waiting for Food and Drug Administration's approval, analysts say the company has been making strides in its own clinical trials, according to Business Week. "In keeping with the Obama administration's priorities for health-care reform, research directors for several disease areas at J&J said their teams have been doing larger patient studies of experimental drugs that compare them to widely used treatments rather than placebos, a new trend called comparative effectiveness research. And J&J is doing more studies seeking "hard endpoints" -- for example, how many heart attacks or strokes are prevented by a drug, rather than improvements in cholesterol or blood sugar."

"Patients and payers increasingly demand such information," BusinessWeek reports, and analysts add that providing it will allow J&J to corner an instant market for the products when new treatments do gain FDA approval (Johnson, 6/4).