Roche opens €90m gene therapy development centre

Roche sees the €90m investment as a harbinger of the German government’s “National Strategy for Gene and Cell Therapies”, which has been in preparation for two years together with Bayer AG and the Berlin Institute of Health and for which further investments are planned. The German government’s Finance Committee has estimated the amount of this investment at €44m in public funds. It is not yet known what additional investments Bayer AG intends to make. The aim of the initiative is to bring together the previously scattered gene therapy players and to coordinate R&D more effectively. An interactive map of RNA development activities in Germany, which the pharmaceutical association VFA has put online and continuously updates, could be particularly helpful for state-of-the-art RNA gene therapy.

At its Penzberg site, Roche AG will primarily produce gene therapy vectors in accordance with GMP and manufacture them for clinical trials. For a long time, the company focussed on antibody conjugates, but then also built up a gene therapy portfolio. One reason for this may be the resistance of payers to the high prices of gene therapies. Only recently, the German Techniker Krankenkasse publicly reopened the cost debate that had already driven US gene therapy developers away from the EU. In fact, most gene therapy trials are currently taking place in China, followed by the USA and the UK, where the world’s third largest gene therapy centre – Catapult – is based.

As gene therapies are considered to have enormous medical and sales potential, Roche AG began planning and building the new development centre for gene therapies at the Penzberg site in 2021. As transport vehicles for DNA, gene vectors open up new possibilities for the long-term treatment of the causes of a wide range of serious diseases at the DNA level. Newer approaches also use chemically stabilised mRNAs encapsulated in liposomes.

Prof Dr Hagen Pfundner, CEO of Roche Pharma AG in Germany, said on the occasion of the inauguration: “With our investments at the various sites, we are strengthening the value chains in the field of gene therapy in Germany – from technical development and production to national supply and export. In this area, Roche in Germany is becoming an international hub, supplying clinics worldwide.”

According to the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT), more than 2,000 gene therapies and genetically modified cell therapies were being researched worldwide at the end of 2023. In the EU, 15 gene therapies are currently approved. Roche is currently conducting research in Switzerland and the USA with cooperation partners on new gene and cell therapies for the treatment of diseases in the fields of neurology, ophthalmology, haemophilia and oncology.