Immunotherapy: the revolution cancer care needs, Roche, Switzerland - video

Roche has been committed to improving lives since the company was founded in 1896 in Basel, Switzerland.

Today, Roche creates innovative medicines and diagnostic tests that help millions of patients globally.

Roche is a leader in research-focused healthcare with combined strengths in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. Roche is the world’s largest biotech company, with truly differentiated medicines in oncology, immunology, infectious diseases, ophthalmology and neuroscience.

Research and Development in the Disease Area of Oncology aims to provide effective cancer therapies through the discovery and development of novel therapeutics that target the specific molecular pathways associated with cancer.

Roche searches for potential cures

Our understanding of the molecular mechanisms of tumor development and how tumors spread has continually improved. This helps our scientists to target the processes that lead to cancer. This is an area where biopharmaceuticals, and especially highly specific antibodies, play an important role. Our goal is to use modern technologies to make these biopharmaceuticals even more effective in the future.

Precise diagnosis – The key to successful treatment

Precise diagnosis is the key to successful treatment. Biomarkers, i.e. components of our body cells that can be used as indicators for the disease, will enable doctors to determine which cancer type a patient has much more quickly and specifically.

Roche is also working to identify tumor markers that will detect tumor cells long before the first symptoms become apparent. This information will help physicians to initiate targeted and effective treatment without delay, thereby enhancing patient well-being and decreasing the cost to the healthcare system.

Roche has actively contributed to the transformation of the lives of people with cancer

For more than 50 years, we have developed innovative medicines and diagnostics that help prevent, detect, diagnose, treat and monitor cancer.

We strive to transform the lives of people with cancer, as well as those who support them. This is our approach:

Progress in cancer prevention

Benjamin Franklin’s quote: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, certainly rings true with cancer. We invest heavily into research to further our understanding of cancer and its underlying causes. With this knowledge, we helping to to raise awareness and educate healthcare professionals and people about the disease and what can be done to prevent it. For example, cervical cancer is the third most common cancer in women and a leading cause of cancer death worldwide. Through increasing awareness of the disease and our development of new diagnostic tests for the screening of human papillomavirus (HPV), its primary cause, we have contributed to improved clinical care that has made it possible to prevent cervical cancer for a vast majority of women at risk.

Awareness initiatives

Treating cancer early and effectively positively impacts a patient’s quality of life, reduces the amount of time taken off work and lessens the impact that cancer has on the patient and their family. We invest heavily in disease awareness initiatives around the globe to facilitate earlier diagnosis and treatment of cancer. We have launched many cancer awareness campaigns, for example campaigns in Colombia and the USA which both focus on breast cancer.  

Development of innovative screening and diagnostics

We combine our ever-evolving knowledge of cancer biology and technological excellence with real-life clinical experience, allowing us to deliver practice-changing diagnostics that can predict and accurately diagnose the disease. In Morocco we have introduced an initiative in which we have donated HER2 tests to improve access to diagnostic tools.

The evolution of cancer treatments

Progress in cancer has been made through advances in our knowledge and understanding of the disease and its causes. Major ‘breakthroughs’ have transformed several aspects of care. Our medicines, for example, have evolved from early chemotherapy through to highly targeted monoclonal antibodies and immunotherapies. Additionally, innovative technologies such as next-generation sequencing and liquid biopsies are transforming cancer diagnostics, facilitating an evolution in personalised healthcare. These advances have changed the natural course of disease for millions of patients.

Our goal is to be at the forefront of finding cures for cancer

“Our expansive therapy portfolio contains 14 different cancer medicines across a number of tumour types which collectively treat well over a million people a year. The number of transformative therapies that are reaching patients is accelerating, which is really encouraging,” said Thomas Buechele, Head of Global Medical Affairs, Haematology & Oncology. “That said, despite all of the progress we have seen, around 14 million people will receive a cancer diagnosis each year. For the majority of these people, a cure for their cancer is not yet available – there is still so much work to be done.”

Our long-term vision is to prevent or cure this disease in all its forms, and our scientific rigour, industry-leading pipeline of investigational medicines and cancer immunotherapies, and our passion for progress will continue to advance cancer care in the years ahead.

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