Roche will be the first global healthcare company to establish an R&D centre at Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park in Shanghai, China. The centre will be wholly owned and operated by Roche and will support the Roche Group’s worldwide R&D activities and its strategic business development efforts in the Chinese market. The Shanghai site will be an important addition to the group’s R&D facilities in the United States, Japan and Europe.
“China is a country with excellent resources and internationally trained biomedical scientists. The creation of our fifth research site in the Roche Pharmaceuticals Division represents a key strategic decision that will allow us to continue to enhance our capabilities in medicinal chemistry on a global level,” said Jonathan Knowles, president of Roche Group Research.
“Looking to the long term, our aim is for the group in Shanghai to discover and optimise new molecules – active ingredients of potential new drugs – which address important unmet medical needs and can be marketed worldwide, including China.”
Speaking recently at the International Business Leaders’ Advisory Council for the mayor of Shanghai, Dr Franz Humer, Roche chairman and CEO, stated: “Over the next few years China will become an even more important market for Roche. Our financial and intellectual investment is an expression of Roche’s long-term commitment to China. The knowledge transfer will support Shanghai in its efforts to become a leader in innovation.”
"For Roche the establishment of the Roche Zhangjiang R&D centre means we are entering a new field in China — in addition to our production facilities in Shanghai and our nationwide marketing and sales organization. For China this investment is a big step towards making Shanghai a centre for pharmaceutical research and biotechnology through transfer of international expertise, competence and knowledge. This is another example of Roche’s excellent cooperation with the City of Shanghai,” said Antonio Chow, general manager of Roche Pharmaceuticals Shanghai Ltd., at a project announcement ceremony in Shanghai.
Scheduled to be fully operational by the end of 2004, the Shanghai facility will initially be staffed by 40 chemists. Discovery efforts at the facility will support medicinal chemistry research and will initially concentrate on key chemical building blocks and focused libraries. These efforts will be aligned with discovery research at the Roche sites in Basel, Nutley, Palo Alto and Penzberg and will contribute to the development of novel, high-quality medicines.
Roche has been active in China for 10 years, with both core businesses — diagnostics and pharmaceuticals — represented. Roche is one of the leading suppliers of prescription medicines in China. The group employs a total of about 1200 people in Hong Kong and Shanghai.
From 2004 on the new centre will be part of Roche’s global pharmaceutical R&D network, which currently includes more than 5000 scientists at four research centres dedicated to providing clinically differentiated drugs to address unmet medical needs. The group’s broad innovation network is based on strong in-house R&D capabilities and alliances with numerous partners around the world, including Genentech and Chugai. In China Roche is collaborating with the Chinese National Genome Centres in Shanghai and Beijing on genetic epidemiology studies into genetic predispositions to conditions such as diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease.
Established in 1992, Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park is one of China’s leading technology parks in the fields of biomedicine and information technology. It offers a full range of competencies in drug research, development and manufacturing.