Roche Picks NYC for New R&D Site

What New Jersey loses, New York City gains, at least in part. Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant, will open a new research center in Manhattan that will take on some of the former responsibilities of its big campus in Nutley, N.J. Roche announced in June that it would shut the Nutley site, where the tranquilizer Valium was invented more than 50 years ago, as part of a cost-cutting effort that would eliminate about 1,000 jobs. At the time, the company said it would open a new translational clinical research center somewhere on the East Coast. The company is expected to formally announce Thursday that it will locate that new operation in the Alexandria Center for Life Science, at 29th Street and First Avenue in Manhattan.