At Roche, we believe in fostering an environment where innovation can flourish and where the patient need is at the heart of our business. We are strong believers that collaboration is the key to this commitment. Through partnerships, we can build a better future together with medicines and diagnostics that make a real difference to patients.
We strive to work with the top scientists in the world, in a broad set of therapeutic areas, with the best tools and technologies, all with a singular goal: to help patients by enhancing our scientific drug discovery and development efforts. Partnered products account for 45% of our research pipeline and 36% of our total pharmaceutical sales.
Roche has long recognized the importance of external innovation by establishing partnering groups within our R&D organizations. While we are one company pursuing a common goal of helping patients through scientific excellence, Roche and Genentech maintain independent R&D organizations served by separate business development groups. Roche Partnering, which was created more than 10 years ago, supports the Pharmaceutical Research & Early Development (pRED) group, while Genentech Partnering supports the Genentech Research & Early Development (gRED) group. Additionally, the Diagnostics Collaboration Division expands our innovation network in the area of in vitro diagnostics. Each R&D centre not only conducts its own development research, but has also entrenched partnering as a cornerstone of their R&D strategy in order to pursue exceptional science and to pioneer medical breakthroughs.
In addition to bringing new medicines and diagnostic tests to market in Canada, Roche recognizes that we have a role to play in broader health system partnerships. We believe that collaboration between our organization and other research-driven institutions is critical to advancing science today and well into the future.
The Roche Data Science Coalition
Roche is committed to working with the global community to develop solutions to the challenges of the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic. We believe that one important way in which the world can win this fight is through the sharing of knowledge and healthcare data to better inform patient care and health system decision making. To help achieve this, we have assembled a group of like-minded public and private organizations with a common mission and vision to bring actionable COVID-19 intelligence to patients, frontline healthcare providers, institutions, supply chains, and government. We call ourselves the Roche Data Science Coalition, and together we have developed a centralized repository for publicly available data, as well as data gathered from a patient self-assessment tool, to be used to enhance COVID-19 research datasets focused on informing the management of the global pandemic.
Canadian Partnerships
As a company, we are known for exceptional science and pioneering medical breakthroughs. We bring that same innovative and entrepreneurial spirit to our partnerships. Canada is a world leader in scientific discovery and many innovative partnerships have come from Canadian institutions and companies.
-
BC Cancer
Roche has partnered with BC Cancer for a number of years on cutting-edge research and projects in precision medicine, onco-genomics and cancer immunotherapy. Through this relationship, we’re supporting world-leading researchers and clinicians who are integrating research and clinical expertise to advance new diagnostics and treatments for cancer patients. As the organization providing cancer care to the entire population of British Columbia, BC Cancer is recognized as a pioneer in the area of onco-genomics and is a world leader in lymphoma and leukemia research.
Roche has been a key supporter of the BC Cancer’s Personalized Onco-Genomics (POG) program that is embedding genomic sequencing into diagnostic and treatment planning for patients with incurable cancers. The goal of this program is to use genomic information to direct patients towards targeted therapies whenever possible. This experimental program has served over 1,000 B.C. cancer patients impacted by 50 different types of cancer since 2014.
-
Foundation Medicine
Roche’s strategic collaboration with Foundation Medicine, Inc. (FMI) is bringing molecular information and genomic analysis to Canadian patients. FMI provides comprehensive genomic profiling to understand a patient’s tumour, allowing a more personalized approach to cancer care by aiming to match their unique genomic profile with approved targeted therapies and novel treatments in clinical trials.
-
Princess Margaret Cancer Centre
Princess Margaret Cancer Centre is one of 21 institutions partnering with Roche through our global cancer immunotherapy Centers of Research Excellence (imCORE) Network, representing many of the world’s leading scientific and clinical experts in cancer immunotherapy. The goal of the imCORE Network is to rapidly initiate pre-clinical and clinical research based on the latest scientific discoveries and to aggregate, as well as share data to accelerate the search for cures for people with cancer. Through this investment, the Network focuses on identifying approaches to expand the number of people who benefit from cancer immunotherapy by exploring new ways to activate a person’s immune system to fight cancer.
-
University of Ottawa Heart Institute
Our partnership with the University of Ottawa Heart Institute and Genome Canada not only allows Roche to continue building on our understanding of cardiovascular disease, but it also has the potential to offer the medical community access to new bedside tests and novel biomarkers to offer early and accurate diagnosis.
-
Vancouver Prostate Centre
Through our licensing and collaboration agreement with the Vancouver Prostate Centre at the University of British Columbia we are working with world leaders in the field to develop small molecules for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. This new technology is currently in pre-clinical development for use in treating prostate cancers that have become resistant to existing therapies.
-
Xenon Pharmaceuticals
We are partnering with Xenon Pharmaceuticals to discover and develop non-opioid based compounds, as well as companion diagnostics for the treatment of pain. Xenon is a clinical genetics-based drug discovery company engaged in the development of small molecule therapies based on the genetic causes of select metabolic, neurological and cardiovascular diseases.
We’re looking for partners! If you have an idea for collaboration or an interesting technology, or if you have an asset in one of our areas of interest, we would like to hear from you.
