LyrArc Article Gist
The new head of Roche, Severin Schwan, sees a huge opportunity in the current state of pharmaceuticals. He says drugmaking is still "so crude," because half of all known diseases cannot be treated at all, and the drugs for the diseases that are being treated don't work as well as they should and with a lot of side effects that make serious drawbacks in using them. He compares this state of affairs to acar that starts only half of the time and has brakes that don't always work. What gets hime excited is the rapid advances in diagnostics, genomics and biotechnology that can bring a"brand new revolution" in personalized medicine. He is pushing forward in the areas of biotechnology with the $47 billion deal that integrates Genentech into Roche, and in molecular diagnostics with the integration of 454 Life Sciences and Ventana. Doubts were raised during the integration of Genentech into Roche about whether the research climate at Genentech could be preserved and whether research scinetists would leave. But most have stayed. With the resources of a larger company behind Genentech and the patient approach that a firm with a founding family controlling the firm can take under a leadership determined to invest in research, experts like Tim Anderson of Bernstein Research see Roche well positioned to grow by aquarter over the next five years.