Roche reorganizes R&D, will up spend

Swiss pharmaceutical heavyweight Roche says that it will be introducing a new operating model for its global R&D activities, organized around disease biology areas. Each DBA will cover the whole range of activities - from R&D to strategic marketing - in a specific therapeutic field. The disease biology area leadership teams (DBLTs) will be co-located in Switzerland and the USA.

The firm also said that, as innovation continues to be at the core of its activities, it expects further increases in 2007 and beyond, not only in R&D staff numbers but in its R&D budget, currently running at around 6.0 billion Swiss francs ($4.8 billion) a year, as well. Roche's DBAs will be created for the following five therapeutic areas:

- oncology, DBLT based in Nutley, New Jersey, USA; - virology, DBLT based in Palo Alto, California, USA; - inflammation, DBLT based in Palo Alto; - metabolism, DBLT based in Basel, Switzerland; and - central nervous system, DBLT based in Basel.