Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Services, LLC has honoured the recipients of Dr Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research. These include Professor Marc Feldmann and Emeritus Professor and Sir Ravinder Maini, of the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, Imperial College London.

The two winners namely Feldmann and Maini received $100,000 prize for their role in the discovery of tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) as an effective therapeutic target for rheumatoid arthritis and other chronic inflammatory conditions.

"The pioneering biomedical research by Feldmann and Maini have significantly improved the lives of millions of patients with chronic inflammatory conditions," said Paul Stoffels, company group chairman, Global Research and Development, Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson. "We are delighted that the 2008 Dr Paul Janssen Award is going to two researchers with a lifelong commitment to translational research. Their achievements would have been greatly appreciated by Dr Paul Janssen, who himself was instrumental in the development of many important medicines," he added.

For more than 20 years, Feldmann and Maini have collaborated on basic research and clinical trials that have transformed the treatment of people diagnosed with chronic inflammatory conditions. They investigated the role of cytokines, protein messenger molecules that drive inflammation and found that a single cytokine, TNF-alpha, was responsible for the debilitating symptoms of inflammatory disease. In seeking ways to block TNF-alpha, the two scientists studied a monoclonal antibody previously developed for an unrelated condition. Clinical trials revealed rapid and dramatic improvement of rheumatoid disease activity with anti-TNF therapy, ultimately influencing the development of several anti-TNF drugs that are used routinely to treat prevalent and debilitating conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis.