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    Roche Holding

    Roche Holding AG history, profile and history video

     Roche Holding AG is a holding company, which manufactures, develops, and markets diagnostic and therapeutic products. The company focuses on pharmaceutical products and services for the early detection, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases. It offers in-vitro diagnostics and drugs for cancer, transplantation, autoimmune diseases, inflammatory diseases, virology, metabolic disorders and diseases of the central nervous system. The company operates through the following segments: Roche Diagnostics and Roche Pharmaceuticals. The Roche Diagnostics segment offers blood glucose meters for people with diabetes; point-of-care testing devices for use in doctor’s offices; high-throughput analyzers for hospitals and commercial diagnostic laboratories; and instruments and reagents for life science research. Its business areas include Roche Professional Diagnostics, which provides integrated cobas branded solutions for blood serum testing in commercial and hospital labs, medical centers, and laboratory networks and supports clinical products decision making in indication fields, including oncology, virology, cardiovascular, inflammatory and infectious diseases; Roche Diabetes Care that integrates glucose monitoring and data management with insulin delivery and helps people with diabetes live healthy, productive lives and to make managing diabetes easier; Roche Molecular Diagnostics, which develops and manufactures tests based on polymerase chain reaction technology; Roche Applied Science that supplies instruments and reagents and test kits for use in the life science research market and industrial applications; and Roche Tissue Diagnostics, which manufactures instruments and reagents that automate tissue processing and slide staining for cancer diagnostics. The Roche Pharmaceuticals offers various products, including ACTEMRA, which is an interleukin-6 receptor-inhibiting monoclonal antibody developed for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis; Bactrim used in the treatment of infections; CellCept, which is used in the prevention of organ rejection in patients receiving kidney, heart, and liver transplants; Dilatrend used for the treatment of hypertension and chronic heart failure; Fuzeon, offers antiretroviral medicinal products for the treatment of HIV infected patients; Lariam used in the prevention and treatment of malaria; MIRCERA, which is used to treat patients with symptomatic anemia associated with chronic kidney disease; Pegasys used in the treatment of patients with viral hepatitis; Valium, which is used in the treatment of anxiety disorders; and Zelboraf, which is an oral, small molecule, kinase inhibitor indicated for the treatment of patients with inoperable and metastatic melanoma. Roche Holding was founded by Fritz Hoffmann-La Roche on October 1, 1896, and is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland.

    “Roche Holding History

    Founded in 1896 by Fritz Hoffmann-La Roche, the company was early on known for producing various vitamin preparations and derivatives. In 1934, it became the first company to mass-produce synthetic vitamin C, under the brand name Redoxon. In 1957 it introduced the class of tranquilizers known as benzodiazepines (with Valium and Rohypnol being the best-known members). Roche has also produced various HIV tests and antiretroviral drugs. It bought the patents for the polymerase chain reaction technique in 1992. It manufactures and sells several cancer drugs and is a leader in this field.

    In 1956, the first antidepressant, iproniazid, was accidentally created during an experiment while synthesizing isoniazid. Originally, it had been intended to create a more efficient drug at combatting Tuberculosis. Iproniazid, however, revealed to have its own benefits; some people felt it made them feel happier. It was withdrawn from the market in the early 1960s due to toxic side-effects.

    In 1976, an accident at a chemical factory in Seveso, Italy, owned by a subsidiary of Roche caused large dioxin contamination; see Seveso disaster.

    In 1982, the United States arm of the company acquired Biomedical Reference Laboratories for US$163.5 million. That company dated from the late 1960s, and was located in Burlington, North Carolina. That year Hoffmann–La Roche then merged it with all of its laboratories, and incorporated the merged company as Roche Biomedical Laboratories, Inc. in Burlington. By the early 1990s, Roche Biomedical became one of the largest clinical laboratory networks in the United States, with 20 major laboratories and US$600 million in sales.

    On April 28, 1995 Hoffmann–La Roche sold Roche Biomedical Laboratories, Inc. to National Health Laboratories Holdings Inc. (which then changed its name to Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings). Roche acquired Syntex in 1994 and Chugai Pharmaceuticals in 2002.

    On 12 March 2009 Roche agreed to fully acquire Genentech, in which it had held a majority stake since 1990, after 8 months of negotiations. As a result of the Genentech acquisition, Roche closed its Palo Alto-based research facilities and moved them to their campus that straddles the border between Clifton, New Jersey and Nutley, New Jerseywhile Roche’s United States headquarters, located on the site since 1929, was moved to Genentech’s facility in South San Francisco. Genentech became a wholly owned subsidiary group of Roche on 25 March 2009.

    In 2011, the company received the ISPE Facility of the Year Award for Process Innovation for Roche’s “MyDose” Clinical Supply project.

    On June 26, 2012, Roche announced the closure of the Nutley/Clifton campus, which was completed in 2013. The property is in the process of remediation.”

    *Information from Forbes.com and Wikipedia.org

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    **Video published on YouTube by “Roche

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