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Diagnostics Partnering Focus Areas

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We at Roche Diagnostics Partnering are working on bringing external innovation together with our internal capabilities to turn ideas into diagnostic solutions.

The important thing to understand is that innovation doesn’t always happen internally within an organization — more often, innovation happens outside. This is where partnering comes in: to make connections with the external innovation environment, and bring those ideas together with our internal research and development teams.

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At Diagnostics Partnering, the way we are structured is that we cover the entire business development value chain. That means we are scouting for cutting-edge innovation. If we see something of interest — and if the partner is interested in working with us — we structure a deal.

This could be an in-licensing deal. We could also divest or out-license, or we might look at potential acquisitions. Sometimes, we reshape platform businesses.

Once we have a deal in place, we have a team that manages those deals and alliances to make

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sure we maximize the value we want to create from them.

With teams who are globally present, we cover what we call the "innovation value chain."

When you hear about an acquisition or a partnership that we announce — in fact, you're only seeing the tip of the iceberg. Behind the scenes, we’ve been screening around a thousand opportunities per year. And with a rigorous selection process, we home in on the technologies and companies that make sense for us to add to our portfolio at Roche Diagnostics.

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In Partnering, we identify technologies and trends very early. Together with experts from the business and R&D, we identify those most important to our strategy.

Through this, we have a real impact on our future product pipeline — acquiring technologies and building a comprehensive portfolio of solutions for our customers.

The rate of advancement in healthcare is really amazing — fantastic to see. But we, as a Roche organization, also need to constantly adapt our

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partnering approaches.

For example, we’ve developed a platform focused on open digital ecosystems — where any eligible innovator can join. Our collaborators gain as much as we do from working together.

By combining our joint capabilities, ideas, and expertise, our ambition is to improve patients' lives and enhance access to healthcare across the globe.

We’re looking for collaborators in areas like home testing, remote care, and monitoring.

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Through our partnerships, we aim to find solutions to some of the big questions of the future — such as cancer screening, home care, and clinical decision support.

At the end of the day, innovation is what happens outside — in universities, in startups. It's these collaborators, these partners, that we are looking to

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find.

To revolutionise today’s standard of care, we are looking for best or first in class innovation in the following areas:

Biomarkers in disease areas

We strive to identify biomarkers that address significant unmet medical needs to enable novel and important physician decision making along the entire continuum of a patient’s journey. We are interested in clinically validated biomarkers in a variety of indications including:

  • Cardiovascular diseases, Infectious diseases, Central nervous system diseases, including brain traumatism, Women's health, Respiratory diseases, Coagulation and haematology, Autoimmune diseases and inflammation, Diabetes and other metabolic diseases, Oncology

Clinical chemistry and immunochemistry

We are committed to diagnostic innovation and have pioneered the integration of clinical chemistry and immunochemistry. The key now is to expand the core lab, consolidating and integrating further a wider range of platforms.

Our areas of focus include:

  • Novel technologies for handling and storage of samples prior to analysis of proteins and metabolites

  • Fractionation and depletion technologies 

  • New platforms e.g. multiplexing and reagents for improved metabolite or protein analysis 

  • Scalable automation solutions

  • Pioneering new fields/ applications for protein and metabolomics markers

Decentralised testing (point of care) and patient self testing

We want to bring lab-quality to point of care and patient self testing to enable making the best treatment decisions possible when patients need it most. Our areas of focus include:

  • Platforms and technologies supporting hospital care, ambulatory care and patient self testing (e.g. immunochemistry, clinical chemistry, blood gas & electrolytes, complete blood count, infectious disease, nucleic acid testing)

  • Pioneering new fields/applications for Point-of-Care and near patient testing (e.g. breath analysis, wearable sensors, physiological testing)

  • New platforms and technologies with fully automated sample handling and detection functionality, lab like performance, and lowest cost disposables

  • IT solutions supporting Integrated diagnostic information anywhere, anytime (e.g. smart apps, communicating sensors with smartphones, disposable read out with smartphones)

Diabetes Care

The vision of Roche Diabetes Care is to help people with diabetes everywhere in the world think less about their daily diabetes routine so they can get true relief, day and night. Our areas of focus include forming collaborations on:

  • Solutions that accelerate and enhance our portfolio of glucose monitoring technologies and insulin delivery systems

  • Services and solutions that enable digital diabetes management

  • If you have a promising technology, why not get in touch with us?

Molecular diagnostics

A new generation of tests supports healthcare providers in choosing medications based on molecular characteristics of diseases and in monitoring treatments. Our areas of focus include:

  • Novel technologies for handling and storage of samples prior to nucleic acid testing

  • Isolation, enrichment and amplification technologies for nucleic acid testing

  • New platforms and reagents for improved nucleic acid testing

  • New technologies to measure nucleic acid modifications (i.e. epigenomics)

  • Pioneering new fields/ applications for Next Generation Sequencing

Haematology/urine diagnostics and coagulation testing

We are constantly looking for new ways to standardise and optimise processes in pathology, haematology or other specialty labs. Our areas of focus include:

  • Novel technologies for handling and storage of tissue and blood samples prior to analysis

  • Rare cell enrichment technologies

  • New platforms for automated pre-analytics for tissue and cell analytics

  • New platforms and reagents for improved immunohistochemistry, complete blood count, and cytology

  • Solutions to support digitalisation of pathology lab

Workflow automation, data analytics and decision support

Our goal is to support clinicians and other relevant stakeholders for the benefit of patients by providing the right decision support at the right time and through comprehensive digital offerings. Our Focus Areas for Innovation:

  • Automation and integration of different in vitro testing disciplines (Serology, Immunology, Molecular, Tissue...)

  • Physical connectivity for the transport of samples without human intervention

  • Virtual connectivity to ensure proper orchestration of testing operations

  • Business Analytics for critical insights into the laboratory value chain

  • Smart algorithms (ML,AI) for data aggregation, analysis and transformation

  • Clinical decision making

Provider and Patient Insights

Our purpose within Diagnostics and Roche Group is to build a sustainable insights business for labs, providers and patients. The DIA Partnering RIS Network will focus efforts on providing digital solutions for existing and new customers. High interest technologies include:

Healthcare data interoperability and integration

Healthcare data activation

Tools to extract, create, and curate longitudinal patient records

Clinical workflow engines

Patient engagement and disease management

Home and remote care technologies

Digital tools with a focus on oncology and neurology

Diagnostics Solutions

Our goal is to have a greater impact on patients and society by offering comprehensive customer solutions, increasing patient access and driving better healthcare outcomes. We are interested in:

  • Anatomic Pathology

  • Companion Diagnostics

  • Digital Pathology

  • Digital Diagnostics

  • Tissue Research

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