Roche sets up r&d institute in France

Roche is launching a new r&d institute in France under the lead of its Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED) unit. The pRED French R&D Institute will be dedicated to collaborative translational research and medicine, with the objective to build in-depth strategic partnerships with leading French academic centres in areas of mutual interest.

The Institute will serve as the single entry point for academic collaborations in France across multiple disease areas and scientific disciplines: oncology, neurosciences, metabolism, inflammation, virology, translational research and toxicology.

‘We are committed to establishing robust collaborations in France, which ranks among the leading nations in life science research, with internationally recognised experts and a fantastic innovation potential,’ said Jean-Jacques Garaud, global head of pRED at Roche. ‘The pRED French R&D Institute will enable us to work hand-in-hand with France’s world-class scientists in a common objective: accelerating the translation of early scientific discoveries into innovative and personalised treatments for patients.’

The pRED French R&D Institute will be managed by a dedicated Roche academic alliances group. This multidisciplinary team will be in charge of building new research networks with leading French academic partners, leveraging their expertise, novel technology platforms and scientific breakthroughs in areas of high unmet medical need.

The French R&D Institute joins Roche’s other academic collaborations established in Singapore, Switzerland (Basel and Geneva) and the Netherlands. Those multidisciplinary collaborative models with multiple investigators and universities are aimed at advancing biomedical research more rapidly from the lab to the patient.

Leveraging external innovation and fostering strategic collaboration with leading academic centres in different parts of the world is a core component of Roche’s global r&d strategy of translating cutting edge science into clinically differentiated medications.

Currently, 48 research programmes with best-in-class French public partners are ongoing in key focus areas like oncology, nephrology, virology or Alzheimer’s disease. Among those are:

• The Curie Institute, with a project on circulating tumor cells and circulating tumor DNA as predictive biomarkers of chemotherapy efficacy in triple-negative breast cancer
• The Pasteur Institute, MIRCEN and ICM, with the development of new CNS imaging markers targeting amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles as new tools for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease
• The Pitié-Salpêtrière and Saint-Antoine University Hospitals, Orsay and ICM, with the identification of blood biomarkers reflecting a modification of brain beta-amyloid peptide metabolism for an early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.
• EMBL Grenoble, with a research programme on influenza cap binding and endonuclease protein crystallography
• The Georges Pompidou European hospital and Necker hospital, with the preclinical/clinical validation of several new plasma and urinary biomarkers of chronic kidney disease.