Roche Opens New Center of Excellence Facility

-- Nutley campus houses state-of-the-art facility to manufacture clinical supplies --

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Sep 30, 2011, 09:00 ET

NUTLEY, N.J., Sept. 30, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Roche announced today the opening of a new state-of-the-art clinical supply manufacturing facility on its campus in Nutley, N.J. The Roche Center of Excellence produces dosage forms of highly potent compounds for preclinical safety studies, and Phase 1 and 2 clinical studies. The 17,000 square foot facility houses specialized equipment to process potent compounds into medicines for clinical trials.

"This is a vitally important milestone for the Nutley site as well as Pharmaceutical Research and Early Development at Roche," said Waseem Malick, PhD, Vice President, Pharmaceutical & Analytical R&D. "It enables continued support of our portfolio, and is another example of Roche's commitment to Nutley as a major research center for Roche."

Plans for the facility were approved in May 2010 and construction began in August 2010. The clinical dosage forms produced by the facility include tablets, capsules, powders, suspensions and solutions. Scientists and engineers manufacture clinical supplies of highly active compounds under current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) for Roche trials worldwide. It also contains warehouses for components, excipients (inactive ingredients) and active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), mechanical rooms and multipurpose isolation suites for manufacturing.

About Roche

Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Roche is a leader in research-focused healthcare with combined strengths in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. Roche is the world's largest biotech company with truly differentiated medicines in oncology, virology, inflammation, metabolism and CNS. Roche is also the world leader in in-vitro diagnostics, tissue-based cancer diagnostics and a pioneer in diabetes management. Roche's personalized healthcare strategy aims at providing medicines and diagnostic tools that enable tangible improvements in the health, quality of life and survival of patients. In 2010, Roche had over 80,000 employees worldwide and invested over 9 billion Swiss francs ($8.7B US) in R&D. The Group posted sales of 47.5 billion Swiss francs ($45.6B US). Genentech, United States, is a wholly owned member of the Roche Group. Roche has a majority stake in Chugai Pharmaceutical, Japan. For more information: www.roche.com.

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SOURCE Roche