Roche Holding

Roche is a multi-national healthcare company that develops pharmaceuticals and diagnostics that improve people's lives. The company was founded in 1986 by Fritz Hoffman-La Roche, in Basel, Base-Stadt, Switzerland.

The company has the mission to provide urgent delivery of medical solutions to improve patients lives. The company has created several medical products such as Alecensa, Avastin, Bactrim, Dilatrend, Fuzeon, Hemlibra, Lucentusm Beupogen, Pegasys, Viracept, Xolair, and Actemra.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, China approved the use of Roche's Actemra for patients with severe cases of coronavirus. The drug has the ability to prevent overreactions in the immune system, which is the leading cause of organ failure deaths in some coronavirus patients. The drug is part of a clinical trial that would be conducted until May, 2020.

Actemra is used as an anti-inflammation drug, and works to treat coronavirus patients with severe lung damage and high IL-6 levels. The drug was originally administered as a treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. The drug will be administered in the US, Italy, Switzerland, France, and Germany.

For COVID-19 diagnostics the FDA granted emergency use authorization (EUA) for a nucleic acid detection test (RT-PCR) that runs on Roche’s cobas 6800/8800 automated systems which can test 4,128 (8800 system) or 1,400 patients (6800 system) per day and provide results in 4 hours. The test is also available in Europe in countries that accept CE marking. The cobas SARS-CoV-2 test is the third test granted emergency approval by the FDA and the first commercially available one. The cobas systems were launched in 2014 and are widely available globally. As of March, 2020 there are 695 of the 6800 instruments and 132 of the 8800 instruments installed.