R & D Direction 

Leading-Edge R&D in Diagnostics and Pharmaceuticals

Roche is in a unique position to innovate significant advances across a broad spectrum of healthcare through the marriage of diagnostics and pharmaceuticals. Our two businesses enable us to apply our combined capabilities in these areas to develop a more individualized and targeted approach to medicine. This includes diagnostic tools enabling physicians to determine a patient's genetic predisposition to disease or to predict how a particular patient will metabolize and respond to a specific treatment.

Our diagnostic capabilities also enable us to take the genetic roots of disease into account when discovering and developing medicines, offering hope of treatments of unprecedented safety and efficacy. This approach distinguishes Roche within the industry as a company specially equipped for leadership in the coming era of more personalized and targeted healthcare.

If you are interested in finding out more about our R&D activities and selected areas of work, please view the following Web sites:

www.roche.com/home/science/sci_hea.htm
http://paloalto.roche.com/randd/RandD.html
www.roche-diagnostics.com/researchers/disease_drug_research.html

Innovation-Driven Pharma R&D

At the core of our Pharmaceutical R&D constellation are our Roche research sites in Switzerland and Germany, as well as our U.S. locations in California and New Jersey. Our research focuses on developing new products in seven key therapeutic areas, including transplantation, as well as on finding strategic licensing and business deals, including possible acquisitions.

We believe that close collaboration among our scientists on projects is essential to our success, so we try to maintain smaller teams and enable our researchers to stay in their national environments. Roche places a high emphasis on effective communications channels among all our R&D sites. This way, we can ensure that all tests are being done the same way so the results will be comparable, giving Roche a tremendous competitive advantage.

Our internal research efforts are augmented by other projects under way in two companies in which we hold majority ownership: biotech pioneer Genentech and Japan-based Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. We also have strategic alliances with a number of major biotech companies as well as with academic institutions. In addition, biotechnology companies spun off from Roche provide us with potential sources of co-development projects.

Industry-Leading Diagnostic Research

The Roche Diagnostics pillar of our organization is similarly built upon a strong foundation of internal research, complemented by an active program of partnerships and acquisitions. Today, the world of diagnostics focuses on tests of the human body, fluids and tissues. Roche Diagnostics is leading the way in developing "actionable health information," so that tomorrow, caregivers and their patients will have the right information, at the right time, in the right place.

Through innovative, gene-based Roche diagnostic research, we aim to achieve tremendous improvements in people's lives and to significantly reduce suffering. We also aim to reduce the wasted spending associated with one-size-fits-all healthcare. We believe that Roche diagnostic research, and the "actionable health information" that results from it, will enable us to take dramatic steps toward individualized medicine that will mean better and more cost-effective healthcare.

Joint Diagnostic and Pharmaceutical Research

At Roche, we believe we possess a critical competitive advantage because of our unique research philosophy and culture in which our diagnostic and pharmaceutical expertise and technology may be shared and maximized by our scientists to enhance the way we develop both tests and medicines. The result is greater speed and efficiency, as well as the opportunity to share genetic and other cutting-edge information to come up with novel pharmaceuticals, innovative diagnostic products, and sometimes possibly even combinations of tests and medicines offering an integrated approach to disease management.