PharmaTelevision - Genentech: Becoming a Part of Roche

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Video title: Genentech: Becoming a Part of Roche

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In this interview, filmed at BioPharm in San Francisco, Dr Fintan Walton speaks with Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Executive Vice President, Research & CSO at Genentech, one of the world's leading biotech companies

They discuss:

• the change to the company now Genentech is owned by Roche
• partnering strategy
• the stars in the company’s product pipeline
• how Genentech chooses which targets to focus on
• the company’s focus on oncology, immunology, neuroscience and infectious diseases
• innovation and Genentech’s involvement in adopting new breakthrough therapeutic approaches
• how Marc believes the company will development in the next 3-5 years

Full video transcripts are available with PharmaTelevision Premium Content. Click here to buy a subscription or sign up for a 14 day free trial.

The change to the company now Genentech is owned by Roche

Fintan Walton :

Hello and welcome to PharmaTelevision news review here in San Francisco at BioPharm America. On this show I have March Tessier Lavigne, who is the Chief Scientific Officer and Executive Vice President at Genentech. Welcome to the show.

March Tessier Lavigne:

Thank you.

Fintan Walton :

March Tessier Lavigne, Genentech has gone through this transformation is now part of the Roche family in terms of being the 100% owned by the organization. There has been a transformation for Genentech as a result of that, you lead obviously a very important component to Genentech as it still stands today. Just could you give us a little bit of indication of how things are now today and how are they different from the past?

March Tessier Lavigne:

Well, when Roche made the, the bid to acquire the remainder of Genentech[DOI: 10.3833/pdr.v2009i3.1075], it announced that it intended to keep the Genentech research and early clinical development organization as an independent unit reporting directly to the CEO with its own budget decision making authority and so forth in order to preserve the culture of Genentech and since the merger last March that's exactly what's happened, we've been set up as a unit called Genentech research and early development or gRED. There are about 1300 people in the research organization which I head, the unit is run by Richard Scheller and includes an addition to research our colleagues in the early development organization as well as portfolio management, business development and so forth. And our deliverable within the Roche organization are medicines that are ready for pivotal trials typically Phase III ready medicines, sometimes earlier. And because we are independent, because we report directly to the CEO we can set our own agenda, choose which targets to focus on, tackle them in the ways that we see as best and develop them through proof of concept. So in many ways its business as usual. At the same time the " we have access to the broader Roche organization and to the technologies, the IP and other resources that are available in the organization, so we also drawn that as well. So we are now one of the autonomous centers within the Rocheorganization that are focused on developing medicines that can then be put into the late stage organization.

Fintan Walton :

So what's important obviously is to retain that " you called as autonomous, it's give that chance to be entrepreneurial still, what was Genentech many years ago, How do you achieve that and continue to keep that alive within an organization?

Full video transcripts are available with PharmaTelevision Premium Content. Click here to buy a subscription or sign up for a 14 day free trial.

Marc Tessier Lavigne

Executive Vice President

I joined Genentech in 2003 as senior vice president, Research Drug Discovery, and in 2008 I was promoted to executive vice president. Following the Roche merger in 2009, I became executive vice president, Research, and chief scientific officer. As head of the Genentech research organization, I am responsible for directing all of our basic and disease research and drug discovery activities, and for ensuring a seamless transfer of our drug candidates to the clinical development organization. I also serve as a member ofGenentech's Executive Committee. Over the course of my career, my initial interest in basic biological processes grew into an equally strong interest in disease processes and in the medical applications of basic science. I came toGenentech because of its deep commitment to innovative research that has the potential to create breakthrough therapies for unmet medical needs. Genentech also has a vibrant and exciting scientific culture that fosters intellectual freedom." Current Projects "Much of our work has been on mechanisms of brain wiring and other basic problems in the developmental biology of tissue growth. Over the past several years, we have started to apply insights from these fields to the problem of brain rewiring and regeneration and, more recently, to neuronal degeneration in both embryonic development and in neurodegenerative disease. We have the best of both the academic and the corporate worlds here: we have the satisfaction of working on the development of novel therapeutics while we continue to elucidate basic biological processes. A key aspect of the Genentech culture that enables this is our postdoc program. In addition to overseeing translational and drug discovery work, I have eight postdocs working on open-ended projects. Like a university, Genentech believes it's important to have a steady stream of young people who tackle fundamental problems in basic and translational biology and who are ready to challenge assumptions." Inspiration/Vision "I like to grapple with complex biological problems and deconstruct their complexity. I feel the same way about disease as I felt about brain wiring when we started investigating it over 15 years ago: we can crack this. Not a week goes by that we don't derive some major new insight from research studies and clinical trials that give key insights into the biology of disease. I feel privileged to be a biomedical researcher at this particular juncture in history. Science and medicine converged at the dawn of the 21st century, making it possible to tackle disease processes with the same tools and the same rigor we use to address basic problems in biology. For a biologist, this is truly the golden age of translational research and drug discovery."

Genentech

Considered the founder of the biotechnology industry, Genentech has been delivering on the promise of biotechnology for more than 30 years, using human genetic information to discover, develop, manufacture and commercialize medicines to treat patients with serious or life-threatening medical conditions. Today, Genentech is among the world's leading biotech companies, with multiple products on the market for serious or life-threatening medical conditions, more than 100 projects in the pipeline and a long term plan for growth.