Jazz Pharmaceuticals is one of the AASM Foundation’s leading corporate supporters. We asked Shay Bujanover, MD, MBA, Global Medical Affairs Therapy Area Head for Neurosciences, some questions about how Jazz Pharmaceuticals’ priorities align with the AASM Foundation’s strategic plan.
Jazz Pharmaceuticals and the AASM Foundation are both focused on creating healthier lives through better sleep. Can you discuss why your company has this focus?
Patient-centric innovation drives Jazz Pharmaceuticals’ strategy as we continuously develop and commercialize life-changing medicines to transform the lives of people with serious diseases—so they can live their lives more fully. For more than 15 years, Jazz has been at the forefront of sleep medicine, and we have long understood that sleep disorders can impact every facet of someone’s life. Many people affected by sleep disorders still need options, which is why we have focused our resources on identifying and developing these therapies.
Jazz now has several approved medicines for sleep disorders, as well as additional therapies under development. At Jazz, we see the high unmet need and limited treatments options as ongoing opportunities to help people with sleep disorders to enjoy small victories every day and experience healthier, fuller lives.
Why is clinical research so important to Jazz?
Jazz is focusing on research and innovation to bring meaningful treatments to patients. We are driven to help more people with difficult, complex diseases have the opportunity to live longer, fuller lives.
We continue to invest in our expanding research and development (R&D) capabilities, growing our portfolio more than four times its size in recent years and enabling end-to-end clinical trial capabilities. This increase in scale, investment and scope of our R&D efforts is strengthening our ability to lead compelling research of new therapies and to collaborate with industry-leading peers. Our purpose is to innovate to transform the lives of patients, and transforming clinical research, whether done internally or with leading academic and industry partners, is an essential way that we live into our purpose.
How does Jazz see research impacting the future of treatment for patients with sleep and circadian disorders?
We are excited about the potential of ongoing research, and the invaluable knowledge we have gained over the past 15 years, to enable us to continue advancing therapies that help patients with sleep and circadian disorders. We are pushing ourselves to explore the next generation of our therapies that reduce the risk to patients of using those therapies given the chronic nature of their use and the co-morbidities that these patients develop due to their sleep disorders. We are also looking at leveraging our therapies to treat a wider patient population. One of our programs that has just completed its Phase III development is investigating a therapy for use in people with idiopathic hypersomnia.
As we break ground with new medicines and enhance existing ones, we understand that every patient is unique. Different patients may respond better to different therapies while having the same diagnosis or require multiple medications to control their condition, and we manage our development pipeline with that in mind. Through our own research, as well as our collaboration with other leaders in the field, we have been learning more every day, and we’re confident that future treatments will continue to improve the lives of people living with these challenging disorders.
Shay Bujanover, MD, MBA
