Roche Cuts to Hit Hundreds of Genentech Workers; Scientific Staff is Spared
Summary
As far back as 2006, Genentech said it was planning to shift the manufacturing group on campus away from commercial output, and gear it more toward producing batches for use in clinical trials, Snyder says.At the time the deal closed, Roche said it wanted to preserve the Genentech’s legendary culture of creativity and independence.One of the bigger surprises in the Roche news was that the company is dropping it efforts to discover new treatments that use RNA interference technology.This is supposed to represent a new paradigm of gene-silencing technology that reaches targets inaccessible by traditional antibody and protein drugs like those made by Genentech, or conventional small molecule pills that Roche and other pharma giants sell.One way to interpret the news would be to say that Roche has more confidence in the future of protein drugs like Genentech’s blockbusters trastuzumab (Herceptin), bevacizumab (Avastin), and rituximab (Rituxan), compared to the outlook it sees for RNAi drugs—none of which have earned FDA approval as of yet.