3 Years After Merger, Genentech R&D Outshines That of Roche's

When Roche paid $46.8 billion in 2009 to gain full ownership of Genentech, fears were rife that the arrival of the Swiss men in suits would stifle the free-wheeling innovative culture at the California-based biotech. Three years on, however, the jeans-wearing scientists in San Francisco have proven they are the ones driving the drugs pipeline of the 116-year-old Basel-based pharma giant, casting a shadow over Roche's own research operations. Roche's four top-selling medicines in 2011 - Rituxan, Avastin, Herceptin and Lucentis - were all cooked up in Genentech's labs and accounted for 55 percent of total pharma sales last year.

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