Roche CEO: Emphasizing drugs for primary care

The new CEO at Roche is sending out some strong signals that the pharma giant's development process will include more new therapies for primary care. Roche is a big player in the field of hospital-based meds. But Severin Schwan (photo) is also emphasizing more experimental therapies that are bound for use by general practitioners to fight common diseases like diabetes.

"I do wonder whether the pharma model is really broken," Schwan tells the Financial Times in a wide-ranging interview. "I fundamentally believe if you are able to come up with innovative medicines including diagnostics, there will be demand."

Faced with a negative reaction to Avastin from regulators in the U.K., Schwan also noted that the best response was not to cut prices on therapies, but rather develop the kind of clinical data that would justify the use of a drug in a broader patient population.

- check out the story from the Financial Times

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