Johnson & Johnson returns to New Jersey after Jacksonville trip the week of its $1 billion Firefly Bio acquisition

Johnson & Johnson flew from Jacksonville to Trenton on June 15, touching down at Mercer County Airport after a 1-hour 53-minute hop in its Gulfstream G650ER (N400J). The flight follows an earlier leg from New Jersey to Florida the same day, a routine round trip for a company with manufacturing and research operations in the Jacksonville area.

The return lands the same week Johnson & Johnson announced it would acquire Firefly Bio for $1 billion in cash, per a company press release on June 8. The deal brings a novel degrader antibody conjugate platform targeting KRAS-driven tumors, which Johnson & Johnson’s executive vice president of R&D, John Reed, called a chance to overcome “limitations of current treatments” for some of the deadliest solid tumors. The acquisition is expected to close later this year, subject to regulatory approvals.

The flight pattern shows a busy month: the G650ER recently shuttled between New Jersey and California, and made a trip to Shannon, Ireland, before heading to Jacksonville. For a company with a mixed fleet and a CEO based in New Brunswick, these movements reflect the constant travel behind a $1 billion bet on a preclinical cancer platform — a bet that, if it fails, “would barely register on the company’s books,” as AOL noted.