Our field of activities

Roche concentrates exclusively on innovative medicines and diagnostic approaches that offer decisive advantages over existing products and solutions. This clear focus has also proved successful in the domestic market: Roche is the largest Swiss pharmaceutical company in Switzerland and no. 1 in the hospital market, in cancer therapy and in all areas of in-vitro diagnostics, of which blood screening and diabetes care are two examples.

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.

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.