Johnson & Johnson’s Mark Wildgust on Putting Patients First in Cancer Care

In the past decade, J&J has treated an estimated 2.5 million people living with cancer. For Wildgust, that number isn’t just data—it represents real patients and real lives.

“That sense of purpose of trying to help people with that cancer diagnosis and give them more time — that really drives me,” says Wildgust.

Wildgust describes J&J’s ambition as both simple and audacious: to eliminate cancer, saying,”That idea of trying to cure patients is bold and hard. But we’re starting to see the results of the work that we’re doing.”

Changing the Equation in Prostate Cancer

One of the biggest headlines for J&J at this year is PROTEUS, a late-stage prostate cancer trial is testing whether adding extra treatment around surgery can improve outcomes for patients with high-risk disease still confined to the prostate.

It addresses a group of patients with high-risk localized prostate cancer who face a hard truth: though surgery is described to them as curative, 50% progress within five years, and those who do have a median survival of just three to five years.

PROTEUS introduces a different approach — combining apalutamide (brand name: Erleada), J&J’s androgen receptor inhibitor, with surgery rather than relying on surgery alone.

By using the drug before surgery to shrink the tumor and after to consolidate the disease, the trial fundamentally changed outcomes. It showed a 20% reduction in the risk of progression and death, a ninefold increase in complete disease clearance at surgery, and a pathway for patients to go five years after treatment before needing further therapy.

“We’ve really changed the equation,” Wildgust says. “One of those treatments for localized prostate cancer today is 122 years old — that’s surgery. We have not made any real advances in more than 120 years. It’s incredible.”

A Portfolio Built Around Unmet Need

J&J’s broader strategy starts with a question: where is the medical need greatest and where is the science ready to meet it? That’s led the company into prostate, bladder, lung, colorectal, and blood cancers — not by chasing a single drug type, but by understanding the biology first and building medicines tailored to each disease.

In multiple myeloma, a rare type of blood cancer, that approach has already moved the conversation from managing the disease to potentially curing it. In lung cancer, data from the CHRYSALIS-2 trial showed a median overall survival of 41 months for patients with atypical EGFR alterations — compared to just 15 months in the real world.

“We’re turning science fiction of medicines into reality,” Wildgust says. “J&J is in the business of hope, and we deliver that hope through science and medicine — better todays and more tomorrows.”

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