Personalised Healthcare

At Roche the prime objective is to provide healthcare solutions which deliver superior options for diagnosis and treatment to clinicians and ultimately the patients.

The approach of personalised healthcare is to use new molecular insights and molecular diagnostic tests to better tailor medicines and better manage diseases. Roche aims at tailoring medicine as closely as possible to patients’ needs. As one of the world’s leading healthcare companies, and given the combined strengths in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics, no company is better suited for this task.

Personalised healthcare has enormous potential to make healthcare better, safer, and more cost-effective.

It will still be some time before the potential of personalised healthcare is fully realised, but the market is clearly shifting away from "one size fits all" products.

Over the last few years, Roche has provided various examples of how interweaving diagnostic and pharmaceutical expertise paves the way for personalised healthcare. Our goal is to provide healthcare professionals with more powerful diagnostic tools and targeted treatments based on the new insights into how disease arises at the molecular level. Some example's of Roche's portfolio:

Breast Cancer: Measuring the presence of a growth factor (HER2) in breast cancer with specific tests such as the one supplied by Roche Tissue Diagnostics (Ventana) identifies patients who are likely to respond to Herceptin, a therapy that specifically targets this growth factor.

Coloretal Cancer: The K-RAS Mutation Test identifies tumor-specific mutations that are on indication of disease prognosis in patients with colorectal cancer. Some drugs used to treat colorectal and other cancers are only indicated for patients who do not carry mutations. So the test helps doctors in identifying patients who will benefit from a specific cancer therapy based on their mutation status.

HIV: Highly specific tests allow physicians to monitor therapy success during treatment with an antiretroviral drug, as well as evolving resistance to therapy and adjustment of treatment.  
HCV: Using the highly sensitive, real-time PCR tests which measure the levels of virus in patient's blood allow doctors to customise regimens for patients based on how well they respond to treatment.

Osteoporosis: Monitoring the effects of anti-resorptive therapy with drugs help physicians to tailor treatment to specific patients' needs.

The AmpliChip CYP450 test analyses variations in two genes that play a major role in the metabolism of many widely prescribed drugs. The world’s first commercial pharmacogenetic product for predicting individual drug response.