Life writes the questions
We pursue the answers
Life writes the questions.
Roche We Innovate Healthcare
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What will help me?
Can I have hope?
When will the others notice?
How much life is six months?
How bad can it get?
Am I alone?
What about my family?
Will my life change?
What if I’m not ready yet?
What’s fair?
How can I protect us?
How many summers have I got left?
Have I expected too much?
Should I ямБght?
How much longer?
Aren’t I too young?
Who can tell me if I’m doing the right thing?
Is it right to give up?
Is there a solution?
When it comes to disease there are as many questions as people. We can’t provide an answer to them all – but we can help with our expertise.
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Roche We Innovate Healthcare
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Innovation is our answer to medical challenges. Our daily work is saving patients’ lives and helping millions of people around the world. We continuously invest in medical research and development to provide new drugs and diagnostic products for conditions such as cancer, AIDS, hepatitis, Alzheimer’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes.
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Roche We Innovate Healthcare
Roche We Innovate Healthcare
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Roche
in a nutshell
We discover, develop and deliver innovative diagnostic and therapeutic products and services that transform patients’ lives and bring real benefits – from early detection and prevention of diseases to diagnosis, treatment and treatment monitoring.
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Roche We Innovate Healthcare
Focus on unsolved medical problems
For more than 110 years Roche has played a pioneering role in healthcare. Today, as world leader in in-vitro diagnostics, we supply a wide range of diagnostic instruments and tests for rapid and reliable disease detection and monitoring by doctors, laboratories or patients themselves. In the therapeutic field, Roche has brought many highly effective drugs onto the market in the last few years. Our daily work focuses on disease areas where medical needs are great. These include cancers, viral infections, metabolic and central nervous system disorders and inflammatory diseases. Roche is the world’s leading supplier of prescription drugs for cancer treatment.
Broad access to innovation
Roche invests heavily in the research and development of new drugs and diagnostic products and complements its own worldwide research activities with a wealth of cooperation agreements with universities, research institutes and biotech companies. This network and our majority stakes in Genentech in the USA and Chugai in Japan provide us with broad access to innovation. As the world’s largest biotech company, we exploit the latest discoveries and technologies to develop our products. Together with our partners we turn the multiplicity of ideas into medical solutions.
Personalised medicine – an interplay of diagnosis and treatment
The rapid progress in research gives us important insights into the molecular mechanisms of disease. We also know that two people can react differently to the same medication and that this is based on variations in our genes. Personalised medicine takes these new discoveries into account in the development of drugs and diagnostic tests. Roche plays a pioneering role in this area and is already marketing the first personalised medicinal products that are tailored to the needs of specific patient groups.
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Oncology
1,000,000,000 7,000,874 6587 423 1
US $ investment hours of work experiments researchers drug
Cancer is not a single, static disease. It is a complex condition of which over 250 types have been identified so far. Its development involves a multitude of changes in the affected cells, and this makes it difficult to fight.
World leader in innovative cancer drugs Roche currently has a number of innovative cancer drugs on the market. They give patients the most important thing in life: time to live. Five of these drugs – Herceptin, Avastin, MabThera/Rituxan, Xeloda and Tarceva – offer clear survival benefits in different types of cancer and each has its own unique mechanism of action that halts tumour growth. In addition to these products, we supply a variety of therapies that help to ease the possible side effects associated with cancer treatment.
Precise diagnosis – the key to successful treatment Precise diagnosis is the key to successful treatment. Biomarkers, i.e. components of our body cells that can be used as indicators for the disease, will enable doctors to determine which cancer type a patient has much more quickly and specifically. We are also working to identify tumour markers that will detect tumour cells long before the first symptoms become apparent. This information will help physicians to initiate targeted and effective treatment without delay, thereby enhancing patient well-being and decreasing the cost to the healthcare system. Roche searches for potential cures Our understanding of the molecular mechanisms of tumour development and how tumours spread has continually improved. This helps our scientists to target the processes that lead to cancer. This is an area where biopharmaceuticals, and especially highly specific antibodies, play an important role. Our goal is to use modern technologies to make these biopharmaceuticals even more effective in the future.
Cancer remains the second leading cause of death in the industrialised world and its incidence is growing. But if detected early enough, many forms of the disease can be effectively treated.
Figures are approximate.
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Roche We Innovate Healthcare
Roche We Innovate Healthcare
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Virology
The revolution
in our diagnostic instruments
Viral diseases are an insidious and serious health hazard. Viruses are often not detected early enough, which allows them to spread uncontrolled. Their infinite adaptability also makes them hard to target and trap.
Flu is a real challenge to our immune system Every year flu viruses attack the immune systems of 100 million people in Europe, Japan and the USA alone, and up to 500,000 people die each year worldwide. By changing their profile slightly every year, they make it difficult for our immune system to fight them off. In a joint project, Roche and Gilead developed Tamiflu, a drug that attacks the flu virus and is now used throughout the world for the treatment and prevention of influenza.
Flu, hepatitis and HIV/AIDS are some of the most widespread viral infections. Once upon a time, only temperatures were taken to give an indication of illness. Today’s molecular medicine offers new diagnostic techniques and treatments to relieve suffering, limit new infections and reduce mortality.
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Roche We Innovate Healthcare
Early detection of hepatitis increases the likelihood of cure Hepatitis is a viral infection that can go undetected in the body for years. Left untreated, it can lead to cirrhosis, liver failure and cancer. Detection and treatment are essential in the early stages when the likelihood of cure is relatively high. Tests that diagnose and monitor the virus in the blood and treatment with our biotech drug Pegasys have helped many of the people who have been infected. Unfortunately, not all patients respond equally well to this treatment. That’s why we’re working intensively on new strategies to provide effective treatment to more patients.
New mechanisms of action help those living with HIV/AIDS HIV/AIDS remains incurable. But deaths from AIDS have declined dramatically in recent years. This is due in no small part to modern molecular diagnostics whose capacity for rapid, reliable and routine detection and monitoring of the virus and virus resistance enables patients’ treatment to be adjusted accordingly. We are proud to have developed two entirely new classes of effective drugs that represent major breakthroughs for HIV treatment and patients. Roche responds to global challenges The world’s poorest countries have access to our virology products. By adopting a combination of tiered pricing, a flexible patent policy and technology transfer initiatives, we’re making it easier for them to address their healthcare challenges. We’re working in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO), committed governments, non-governmental organisations and other stakeholders to develop solutions that benefit the least developed countries.
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Metabolism
This drop
can save lives
Regulation of our body’s blood sugar level is a vital yet delicate balance, which can easily be disrupted. The result is diabetes. The WHO estimates that more than 180 million people worldwide suffer from diabetes. Type 2 diabetes – the commonest form of the disease – is now recognised globally as a growing epidemic.
Independence for people with diabetes Diabetes isn’t a disease you can necessarily feel – to detect it and keep it under control, there’s no substitute for regularly checking your blood sugar levels. Testing takes just a single drop of blood and a few minutes. We offer a wide range of products that make it easy for people with diabetes to check their blood sugar levels consistently in day-to-day situations. Roche – the leader in diabetes care For over 30 years our Accu-Chek blood glucose meters have ensured precise and rapid blood sugar measurement both at home and on the move. Not only that, they have become increasingly easy to operate. State-of-the-art measurement, infusion and data processing systems help doctors and patients to implement comprehensive diabetes management and hence optimise treatment. Regular blood sugar monitoring gives people with diabetes a major advantage, enabling them to lower the risk of potentially life-threatening complications.
Diabetes is a complex chronic disease. But it can be controlled through a combination of the right lifestyle, good health management and new treatment strategies. The core component in controlling diabetes is careful blood sugar monitoring.
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Diabetes prevention in Africa The number of people with type 2 diabetes appears to be increasing significantly in rural South Africa. The Phelophepa train, a South African community health clinic on rails which Roche has sponsored since its inception, helps people to prevent the onset of diabetes and to recognise its symptoms. The train brings primary healthcare services, general medical care and health education programmes to rural areas. Roche’s commitment to Phelophepa exemplifies our philosophy of collaborative and sustainable corporate donations. We believe in supporting novel, practical solutions that are tailored to local conditions and needs and that can be implemented in conjunction with committed local partners.
New research strategies focus on metabolism Researching new drugs against diabetes means taking a patient’s metabolism into account. Recognising that obesity, lipid metabolism disorders and high blood pressure are closely associated with diabetes, Roche is testing various compounds that act at key metabolic interfaces. At the same time we’re using a new comprehensive approach called systems biology to research the central role played by the body’s insulin-producing cells.
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Inflammation
Our contribution
to enhancing quality of life
Rheumatoid arthritis is one of the most common autoimmune diseases, affecting more than 21 million people worldwide. In 30–40% of cases conventional drugs are ineffective or poorly tolerated. Now, biopharmaceuticals are paving the way for a new treatment that can impede progression of the disease and prevent joint damage and pain.
Roche goes to the root of the disease Our researchers are looking to deepen their understanding of the immune system and pinpoint the causes and course of arthritis. Their discoveries have already resulted in new drugs offering real patient benefits. Biopharmaceuticals such as MabThera/ Rituxan in rheumatoid arthritis selectively intervene in the molecular course of the disease without weakening the immune system as a whole. This new mechanism of action alleviates pain and holds the disease in check. The earlier the diagnosis, the better Currently doctors rely on a constellation of signs and symptoms to make a firm diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis. By that time many patients are already disabled by their damaged joints. Our goal is earlier detection using a reliable disease indicator in the form of a biomarker incorporated in a diagnostic test. Only then will doctors be able to intervene early enough to prevent joint damage and disability.
Intensive collaboration with patient organisations It is important to us to gain a greater understanding of what it is like to live with this and other diseases, and to comprehend the challenges facing patients and their families. That’s why we collaborate closely with different patient organisations – to gain knowledge, for example, about disease-related problems or the user-friendliness of drugs which only they can supply. This cooperation also enables Roche to gather experience that is channelled into support for doctors and nursing staff, and in this way benefits patients.
We speak of an autoimmune disease when the body turns on itself and the immune system mistakes “self ” for “non-self ”. Innovative biopharmaceuticals offer a defence against this autoimmune attack.
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Roche We Innovate Healthcare
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Central nervous system
The most effective drug
when it comes to the brain
Central nervous system disorders are among the world’s greatest unresolved health problems, and Alzheimer’s disease is one of the biggest threats facing aging industrial societies. There is currently no prospect of a cure for Alzheimer’s, only the possibility of slowing its progression.
Fighting forgetfulness with therapeutic antibodies We’re thinking outside the box to attack the disease at its root. We’re researching various strategies for dissolving the brain deposits, known as plaques, that are characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease. One promising approach, identified in collaboration with a partner, is based on a human therapeutic antibody that is custom-designed for this purpose. Patients will benefit because removal of the deposits has been linked to improved cognitive functioning. New perspectives for schizophrenia patients Years of research on the central nervous system is leading us in new directions and towards innovative approaches to the treatment of schizophrenia. We have discovered compounds that differ in their mechanism of action from the classical antipsychotics currently used to treat schizophrenia. This may bring fresh hope to patients with psychiatric disorders.
Responsible action Research entails responsibility. That’s why we’ve always applied the highest ethical standards in research and development, reflected for example in our guidelines governing genetic research or clinical trials. Before a drug comes to market a regulatory authority must approve it. This approval process includes pre-clinical laboratory and animal studies, as well as clinical trials to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of the drug. We believe that we have an ethical obligation to inform the public about our clinical trials and their results so that this information can be helpful to patients and physicians.
Developing effective drugs for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia or depression is a major challenge. Nevertheless, research in these areas has progressed enormously in the last few decades.
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Roche We Innovate Healthcare
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Personalised medicine
This molecule
makes the difference
Our aim is to continue tailoring medicine as closely as possible to patients’ needs. As one of the world’s leading healthcare companies, and given our combined strengths in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics, there’s no one better suited for the task of developing personalised medicine.
People are different and so are diseases Individuals react differently to specific medications due to the variations in their genes. Moreover, many diseases occur in genetically distinct subtypes that vary in their clinical course and prognosis. Thus, two patients who seemingly have the same disease and are treated with the same medicine may respond in radically different ways. One may benefit fully from treatment, while the other experiences unwanted side effects or derives no clinical benefit at all. Variations in our genes How well certain drugs work depends in many cases on specific gene variations in patients. A modern DNA chip (AmpliChip CYP450 test) enables doctors to identify these variations in a minute amount of DNA. Based on this knowledge, they can then adjust treatment accordingly. As a result patients receive the right dosage of the right drug, which leads to a better treatment outcome.
Medicine is becoming increasingly personalised Over the last few years Roche has given various examples in the fields of cancer treatment and viral diseases of how the interweaving of diagnostic and pharmaceutical expertise paves the way for personalised medicine. Our aim is to provide healthcare professionals with more powerful diagnostic tools and targeted treatments based on the new insights into how diseases arise at the molecular level. Setting our sights on the future We’re convinced that only innovation can maintain the requisite quality of healthcare over the long term. Innovation is the core of our strategy and the key to safer, more cost-effective and more people-friendly medicines.
Every patient expects the best possible treatment. Science helps to provide it. Growing insights into the causes and progression of diseases on a molecular level offer the opportunity to improve the way we diagnose and treat disease. People are different, and for that reason one size does not fit all.
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Roche We Innovate Healthcare
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There are as many answers as people. We continue to research individual solutions.
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Roche We Innovate Healthcare
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Published by F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd Corporate Communications 4070 Basel, Switzerland © 2008 All trademarks mentioned enjoy legal protection. This brochure is available in German, English, Spanish and French. Printed on FSC-certified paper Concept and design Interbrand Zintzmeyer & Lux, Zurich Printed in Switzerland by Birkhäuser + GBC, Reinach BL
World Wide Web http://www.roche.com
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Roche We Innovate Healthcare
Published by F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd Corporate Communications 4070 Basel, Switzerland Š 2008 All trademarks mentioned enjoy legal protection. 7 000 798
Roche We Innovate Healthcare