Roche Constructs Diagnostics Facility Near Munich

Roche (Basel, Switzerland) is investing US$190 million at its site in Penzberg, near Munich, Germany. The money will be used to construct a multi-purpose building for Roche Diagnostics. The new building will be known as the Diagnostics Operations Complex (DOC) and will have a total floor area of 30,400 square meters. The complex consists of a central six-storied laboratory building with a basement flanked by two single-storied factory halls for the production units.

The building will house laboratories and production facilities for the Roche Applied Science and Roche Professional Diagnostics business areas. From about the middle of 2010, the complex will be manufacturing products ranging from biotech constituents for immunodiagnostics and the life-science market through to complete immunodiagnostic test kits. These test kits are used worldwide in diagnostic systems such as Cobas and Elecsys.

One of Roche's important markets is immunodiagnostics, which includes heterogeneous tests such as the cardiac markers NT-proBNP for acute and chronic heart failure and troponin T for myocardial infarction. Roche's immunologic tests are used by physicians for a variety of other applications, such as checking thyroid function, determining tumor markers, detecting infectious diseases such as hepatitis and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), or helping to verify the effectiveness of drug-based therapy.

"In recent years, we have been successful in continuously expanding and marketing our range of immunodiagnostic tests,” said Jürgen Schwiezer, CEO of Roche's Diagnostics Division. "We are systematically pushing forward our activities in this interesting growth market by strengthening our capacity and capabilities in the research, development, and production of diagnostics constituents and tests. Against this background, the investment marks an important step in enhancing our leading position in the immunodiagnostics segment.”

Roche is an innovator of products and services for the prevention, early detection, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases. Roche is a world leader in in-vitro diagnostics and drugs for cancer and transplantation, and a market leader in virology.

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