Roche and Genentech expand research footprint at the center of global life sciences in Boston
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Reimagining medicine: inside Roche and Genentech’s new Boston hub for multi-organ health
BOSTON — By 2035, over four billion people (more than half of the global population) are projected to be living with cardiovascular, renal, and metabolic (CVRM) diseases , a trend affecting nearly every country. For generations, healthcare treated obesity, cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, type 2 diabetes and related conditions as isolated diagnosis. Today, science tells a different story: they are deeply interconnected, feeding off shared biological pathways.
If we want to make a real difference for patients, we cannot look at the heart, the kidneys, or metabolic health in isolation. To change the future of chronic disease care, we have to connect the science.
That vision is now a reality. Roche and Genentech have officially opened the Roche Genentech Innovation Center (RGIC) Boston. Located at Harvard’s Enterprise Research Campus in the Allston neighborhood of Boston, the 95,000-square-foot, 500-person hub brings together discovery and translational biology, clinical development, data science including artificial intelligence under one roof.
Rather than building a standalone research entity, the center operates on the principle of proximity. By bringing specialized CVRM expertise together under one roof, RGIC complements our established global hubs in South San Francisco and Basel. Establishing this focused footprint in Allston allows Roche and Genentech to plug directly into what makes the Boston-Cambridge area unique: its unmatched mix of academic discovery, AI talent, and biopharma innovation.
This spirit of collaboration was on full display at Klarman Hall at Harvard Business School, where Roche and Genentech hosted the Inaugural Science Symposium, "Frontiers in CVRM," alongside the official grand opening. The event convened world-class scientists, academic leaders, clinicians, and policymakers for a day of deep dialogue on the future of medicine. The consensus across panels was clear: solving the complex, multi-organ challenges of cardiovascular, kidney, and metabolic disease requires breaking down institutional boundaries and connecting the global scientific community.
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When I looked around Allston, I saw Harvard Business School right across the street, and the Science and Engineering Complex just minutes away. Not long ago, this was an industrial rail yard. Today, it is a place for science, engineering, and entrepreneurship. That is why we opened this center: to bring discovery, research, clinical development, AI, and data science together in one of the world's strongest life sciences ecosystems.
Abandoning silos: treating the biological continuum
Historically, a patient managing diabetes, hypertension, or kidney dysfunction navigated separate medical specialties. But these diseases are not a collection of isolated symptoms; they represent the disruption of deeply connected biological systems.
At RGIC Boston, scientists are taking a systems-level approach. By pairing deep mechanistic biology with advanced machine learning, research teams aim to move beyond managing chronic symptoms to reversing underlying disease pathology across obesity, type 2 diabetes, liver diseases, and cardiorenal conditions.
A permanent address for breakthrough collaboration
Scientific breakthroughs rarely occur in isolation. Instead, they thrive where organizations choose to invest in proximity. By establishing a permanent physical anchor in Allston, RGIC Boston cements over a decade of partnership between Roche, Genentech, and Harvard University—bringing researchers, data scientists, and clinical teams together under one roof.
Situated adjacent to Harvard’s scientific ecosystem, the hub enables academic minds, computational biologists, and clinical trial teams to work side-by-side. Applying machine learning directly to clinical development allows researchers to analyze data in real time, build predictive disease models, and accelerate the journey of new therapies from the bench to patients.
The facility is also a major cornerstone of Roche’s broader $50 billion 5-year investment commitment in U.S. R&D and manufacturing, reinforcing a long-term dedication to U.S. scientific leadership alongside major sites in California, North Carolina, and Oregon.
At the end of the day, that’s what this is all about: the grandmother whose diabetes is getting harder to manage, a dad recovering from bypass surgery, a friend with chronic kidney disease. Facilities like this are for people looking for hope.
:quality(90)/ "From left to right: Mark Dawson (Head pRED), Aviv Regev (Head gRED), Silke Hoernstein (Global Head of Strategy & Sustainability), André Hoffmann (Member of the Roche Group Board of Directors), Wafaa Mamilli (Chief Digital Technology Officer), John Manning (Provost of Harvard University), Maura Healey (Governor of Massachusetts), Thomas Schinecker (Chief Executive Officer, Roche Group), Manu Chakravarthy (Senior Vice President & Global Head of CVRM Product Development and Site Head), Michelle Wu (Mayor of Boston), John Lawn (Massachusetts Representative), Meghan Kilcoyne (Massachusetts Representative), Alan Hippe (Chief Financial Officer, Roche Group), Levi Garraway (Head of Global Product Development and Chief Medical Officer), Fritz Bittenbender (Head of U.S. Public Affairs, Genentech).")
Delivering what patients need next
As Boston looks ahead to its 400th anniversary as a global center of progress, RGIC Boston stands as a model for public-private synergy—uniting state and municipal leadership, world-class academic institutions, and biopharma innovation.
For Roche and Genentech, opening the doors in Allston is more than an enterprise milestone; it is an active promise to the millions of patients worldwide who need transformative treatments for interconnected diseases.
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