Roche scientist provides a look at drugmaker’s early pipeline
Source: www.nj.com/ Author: Susan Todd/The Star-Ledger Jean-Jacques Garaud, who heads Roche’s pharmaceutical research and early development efforts in Switzerland, visited the drugmaker’s Nutley campus in mid-December and spent some time speaking with The Star-Ledger about the company’s efforts in the laboratory. The talk with Garaud provided a rare glimpse of the giant Swiss drugmaker’s early-stage pipeline and highlighted the heavy bets it’s making on personalized medicine (drugs that are tailored to treat individuals whose genes or enzymes show specific biological signs of disease). If the strategy succeeds, Roche could eventually push out some breakthrough drugs for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and depression. Garaud, a French-American who joined Roche five years ago, also opened up about a discovery made in Nutley that may represent a novel cancer treatment and the high hopes behind a project with the promise of altering the lives of individuals born with a syndrome that causes mental retardation. During the interview, Garaud talked about some medicines so early in development that they are still referred to by strange-sounding laboratory names. Q. Where do things stand with gantenerumab, the monoclonal antibody Roche is developing as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease? A. This is in phase 2 and this is testing a patient population in the early stages of the disease or suffering from mild cognitive impairment. We believe this particular type of intervention may be more beneficial when it happens early in the disease so that it delays progression. This antibody targets the abnormal material called amyloid that deposits [...]