Johnson & Johnson lands in Jacksonville after $1 billion cancer bet

Johnson & Johnson flew from Trenton Mercer Airport to Jacksonville International Airport on June 15, a 1-hour-40-minute hop aboard its Gulfstream G650ER (tail N400J), arriving just after 1 p.m. local time.

The same week the company announced its $1 billion cash acquisition of Firefly Bio, a biotech startup developing a degrader antibody conjugate platform for KRAS-driven tumors, according to a June 8 press release on the company’s own site. The Firefly deal is part of Johnson & Johnson’s broader push toward $100 billion in annual revenue this year, as CEO Joaquin Duato outlined on a first-quarter earnings call in April. Jacksonville hosts the company’s orthopedics and surgical devices campus, a logical destination when an executive team is simultaneously absorbing a new oncology asset and integrating recent launches like Icotyde and Inlexzo.

The pattern of short-haul flights from Trenton to Johnson & Johnson’s other campuses is familiar: earlier this month, the same aircraft shuttled between New Jersey and Washington D.C. on May 14, and between New Jersey and the company’s shelburne water aerodrome in Canada on April 24. Today’s trip suggests routine intra-company oversight of both the medical-device division in Florida and the pipeline expansion being funded by the Firefly check.