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Roche said that it would spend $ 50 billion on manufacturing and research and development in the United States, becoming the last pharmaceutical company to promise a greater investment to potential prices in the sector.
The Swiss Society of Medicines and Diagnostics will invest over the next five years, providing for that it would create 1,000 jobs in Rock and 12,000 in total, including construction.
CEO Thomas Schinecker stressed that the company already had a large R&D and a manufacturing base in the United States. In 2009, he acquired US Biotech Genentech for $ 47 billion.
“We are proud of our 110-year inheritance in the United States which was a key engine for jobs, innovation and the creation of intellectual property in the United States,” he said.
Roche follows his Peer Switzerland Novartis And American drug manufacturers Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly to make major commitments to the United States since the Trump administration came to power. Novartis announced an investment plan of $ 23 billion at the beginning of the month, while I promised $ 55 billion in March, and Eli Lilly announced a 27 billion dollar plan in February.
Manufacturers of medical devices have been struck by us price Announced at the beginning of the month, but the pharmaceutical industry was excluded.
However, the administration has launched a probe from the pharmaceutical sector that could lead to prices. Trump reported that he would like drug manufacturers to straighten the manufacture, saying recently: “We no longer do our own drugs, our own pharmaceutical products. Pharmaceutical companies are in Ireland and they are in many other places – China. ”
Even if the pharmaceutical industry has been excluded, Switzerland has been affected by particularly high prices of 31% on other imports, much more than the United Kingdom and the EU. The country exports nearly a quarter of its medical devices to the United States and abolished its industrial prices last year.
It is said that he was considering billions of investment promises for the United States, rather than pricing reprisals.
Roche’s investment in the United States will include extension and upgrade facilities in Kentucky, Indiana, New Jersey, Oregon and California, building a new gene therapy factory in Pennsylvania and a production site for continuous glucose surveillance devices.
It also provides a new manufacturing center for its new generation weight loss treatments, which include those of a partnership of $ 5.3 billion with Zealand Pharma signed last month. But these are still testing.
Roche will also open a new R&D center in the Massachusetts, which will carry out research on artificial intelligence and will be a center for its efforts to develop cardiovascular, renal and metabolic drugs.
