Johnson & Johnson Innovation LLC is opening 2017 with a blizzard of new deals, touching depression, cancer, diabetes, obesity and more. Highlights among the deals include an option to buy Bird Rock Bio Inc. following a phase I readout for its non-alcoholic steatohepatitis candidate, namacizumab, and dibs for Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. on new fast-acting ketamine analogue antidepressants to be developed with Amorsa Therapeutics Inc. Further deals enlist partners to explore development of RNA-based therapies for cancer and infectious disease and new therapies for prostate cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and metabolic disorders.

Under the agreement with La Jolla, Calif.-based Bird Rock, Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. will evaluate the cannabinoid receptor 1-targeted namacizumab, a negative allosteric modulating antibody that Bird Rock expects can avoid adverse events hit by small-molecule CB1 modulators that penetrate the central nervous system. The company's two-part phase I trial is anticipated to provide important safety, tolerability and biomarker efficacy data. If successful, it will also position investors for a quick exit should J&J exercise its option to snap up the company.

Another deal with Janssen Pharmaceuticals enlists Southborough, Mass.-based Amorsa to develop and commercialize a small-molecule therapy for treatment-resistant depression based on Amorsa's ketamine analogue technology. Janssen now has a worldwide exclusive option to license one of the preclinical drug candidates the company develops and will shoulder the clinical, regulatory and commercial development burdens of moving it ahead should it succeed. Amorsa will receive an up-front payment of undisclosed value, along with research funding, and is eligible to receive preclinical, clinical, regulatory and sales milestones, plus tiered royalties on product sales. The deal adds another facet to J&J's existing ketamine program, under which it's developing the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonist esketamine for the treatment of major depressive disorder with imminent risk for suicide.

In a separate agreement, Janssen Vaccines & Prevention BV inked a collaboration with La Jolla, Calif.-based Synthetic Genomics Inc. to develop RNA technology enabling a "tuneable, multigenic" approach to antigen expression and immune responses against certain infectious diseases (which it did not name) and cancer.

A research alliance between Janssen Biotech Inc. and New York-based Weill Cornell Medicine will chase down new therapeutics for treatment-resistant prostate cancer, giving Janssen an exclusive option to negotiate a license for resulting product candidates. Meanwhile, another deal with Brisbane, Queensland-based Dendright Pty. Ltd. puts Janssen Biotech in the position of supporting further research tolerizing immunotherapy for the treatment of patients with rheumatoid arthritis. A first-in-human safety and tolerability study in the second half of 2017 will serve as a key milestone in the development of a new liposomal drug product, DEN-181, supported by the collaboration.

Metabolic disorders will also get attention, under an agreement with Amsterdam-based Caelus Health, which is developing microbiota-based products for early intervention in cardiometabolic disease. Caelus will join JLINX, a partnership between J&J and Bioqube Ventures in Beerse, Belgium, focused on identifying and nurturing early stage companies.

Altogether, the innovation unit helped orchestrate 15 new deals for Johnson & Johnson, with products and R&D efforts that span broadly across the biopharmaceutical, medical device and diagnostic space. The new agreements raise the number of total strategic transactions orchestrated since the innovation unit's start to more than 300. J&J's overall R&D spend hit $9 billion in 2015.

Deciding what to invest in to support the future growth of the company requires a certain degree of futurism, Robert Urban, head of J&J Innovation, told BioWorld Today. "When you're in the health care space trying to make investment decisions, you're not making those decisions in the context of the world you're living in now. You have to make educated guesses about what the future's going to be like."

Interwoven in all of that, he said, is the requirement of taking into account the changing ways in which the company imagines all of its products currently under development will change the nature of future health care.

With more than 230 collaborations and other strategic relationships with life sciences companies managed over time by J&J Innovation centers in California, Boston, London and the Asia-Pacific region, the company has a lot to track. Furthermore, with blockbusters like Remicade (infliximab) facing biosimilar competition and its psoriasis drug, Stelara (ustekinumab) facing growing generic competition, the company has a lot at stake. A steady flow of new R&D collaborations is essential for J&J's future growth. Fortunately for its ambitions, Urban said that over that time the company's innovation unit has achieved not just significant scale but also powerful new efficiencies along with it.