Hungarian Investment Promotion Agency

Roche, based in Basel, and having a background of more than a century, is a leading biotechnology company that uses differentiated medicals for the treatment of oncological, immunological, and infectious diseases, and eye- and central nervous system disorders, and it is leader of many other areas, too. The List of Essential Medicines of the World Health Organization (WHO) lists more than thirty medicines developed by Roche, including among others: antibiotics, anti-malaria, and oncological preparations. In 2018, the Swiss company is present in 100 countries of the world, had 94,000 employees globally, and spent CHF 11 billion on R&D.

Roche established representation, a scientific centre in Hungary 35 years ago, in 1984. The centre was expanded with a diagnostics unit in 1991, and all of Roche's products have been available in Hungary since that year. They decided for Hungary in 2006 again, and chose Budapest for their service centre providing financial, HR, and IT support. In 2018, the company performed 82 pharmaceutical clinical tests in Hungary with the involvement of more than 750 patients, providing Hungarian patients with the availability of the newest test preparations. Roche's most important objective is to make personalized treatments widely available as soon as possible.

Through the present investment in Hungary, Roche will create a Pharmacovigilance unit (PV HUB) performing certain tasks in a centralised way for other countries. The PV HUB will operate at Roche's office in Budaörs, and the team will be responsible for processing reports of adverse events associated with the use of Roche medicines across 29 countries of Europe and the Balkans. Such monitoring is a regulatory requirement and plays a crucial role in ensuring the safe and appropriate use of medicines The PV HUB will directly report to the headquarters in Basel; and it will create 25 new, high added value jobs in the upcoming years.