Article preview from IN VIVO July 28, 2009
What does Roche's privatization of Genentech mean for the companies' business development organizations and current and future partners? We recently sat down with the company's two business development chiefs to find out. Read on...
Article preview from IN VIVO July 28, 2009
Roche's privatization of Genentech Inc.—as the Big Pharma likes to call the long and topsy-turvy process by which it succeeded in buying the 43% of the iconic biotech that it didn't already own—is complete.
But if Genentech isn't the kind of company Roche can (or would want to) integrate into its broad organization, it mightn't necessarily make sense to leave it to its own devices either. A reorganization announced on April 16 saw the effective departure of erstwhile CEO Arthur Levinson, PhD, and product development head Susan Desmond-Hellmann, MD. Roche Pharma North America's commercial operations were to be combined with Genentech's and run from Genentech's South San Francisco headquarters; to oversee the combined group, Roche commercial pharma head Pascal Soriot was named CEO of the biotech unit.
But during the call to announce the new corporate structure Severin Schwan, PhD, Roche's CEO, made clear that Genentech's R&D engine would more or less remain independent. Genentech Research and Early Development, led by EVP Richard Scheller, PhD, "will directly report to me and keep its ongoing processes, structure, decision making for research and early development up to Phase II proof-of-concept, and after that the compounds are then forwarded into late development as part of the global organization," Schwan said.
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