Baron Janssen

Paul Adriaan Jan, Baron Janssen (12 September 1926 – 11 November 2003) was a Belgian physician. He founded Janssen Pharmaceutica, a pharmaceutical company with approximately 20,000 workers that is now a division of Johnson & Johnson.

Paul Janssen was the son of Constant Janssen and Margriet Fleerackers. He attended secondary school at the Jesuit St Jozef college in Turnhout before deciding to follow in his father's footsteps and become a physician. Janssen studied physics, biology, and chemistry at the Facultés universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix (FUNDP) in Namur during WWII. He subsequently went on to study medicine at the Catholic University of Leuven and Ghent University. Janssen obtained his magna cum laude medical degree from Ghent University in 1951. In 1956, he received a postdoctoral degree in pharmacology from the same university and studied at the University of Cologne's Institute of Pharmacology.

During his military duty and until 1952, he worked at the University of Cologne's Institute of Pharmacology. Janssen established his own research laboratory in 1953 with a loan from his father of 50,000 Belgian francs. That same year, he discovered ambucetamide, an antispasmodic shown to be especially beneficial for menstrual pain reduction. On February 11, 1958, he discovered haloperidol, which was a key breakthrough in the treatment of schizophrenia. He and his colleagues created the fentanyl family of medications as well as a variety of anesthetic agents such as droperidol and etomidate. Diphenoxylate (Lomotil), one of his anti-diarrheal medications, was utilized in the Apollo program.

Janssen Pharmaceutical was the first Western pharmaceutical business to open a factory in the People's Republic of China in 1985. In 1995, he co-founded the Center for Molecular Design with Paul Lewi, where he and his team used a supercomputer to search for candidate compounds for potential AIDS medicines.

Janssen and his team of scientists discovered approximately eighty new pharmaceuticals in total, four of which are on the WHO list of essential medicines. King Baudouin elevated him to the Belgian nobility and bestowed the title of Baron on him in 1991. Janssen died in 2003 in Rome, Italy, while attending the 400th anniversary of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, of which he had been a member since 1990.