Roche, one of the largest pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in the world with a turnover of close to 65,000 million euros, is betting heavily on Catalonia and, more specifically, on its headquarters in Sant Cugat del Vallès, which it has converted into one of its global innovation hubs for the diagnostic equipment and diabetes care divisions.
The multinational based in Basel (Switzerland) settled in Sant Cugat 20 years ago, on land located next to HP's headquarters where it has been building different buildings, until configuring a campus that today occupies an area of 30,000 square meters. Over the last few years, the complex has gained weight within the organization, with the attraction of new departments and R&D centers, which has meant multiplying the workforce, to a total of 1,300 highly qualified workers from up to 30 different nationalities. On campus, there is a hub for designing digital platforms, a global center for patient care with diabetes, R&D teams for the diagnostics division, and professionals who provide support functions for the multinational in different areas. One of the latest departments to join Sant Cugat is the R&D laboratory for hemostasis technology, a division that Roche acquired from Grifols at the end of 2021.
"There is a clear commitment from the group to Barcelona, an important pole for the development of digital technologies that also offers us good availability of talent in fields such as biomedicine and genomic engineering," says Adriana Rubio, general director of Roche Diagnostics in Spain. According to the executive, Barcelona is an attractive place to attract talent, a factor that combines with the appeal of Roche's business purpose, which seeks "to contribute to people's health care and to guarantee a more sustainable health system."
In an interview granted to The New Barcelona Post, Rubio explains another decisive factor that has driven the Sant Cugat campus: "the good performance of the Spanish hospital system," since it is prone "to the adoption of innovations and allows co-creation." "We work shoulder to shoulder with large hospitals, such as Bellvitge, Hospital del Mar, Hospital 12 de Octubre, Hospital General de Valencia or Hospital de Galdakao-Usansolo, to respond to the new needs required by the health system," says the executive.
The growth of the Sant Cugat campus has led the company to invest 51 million euros in the construction of a new building and the renovation of the rest of the facilities, which have been adapted to foster a more collaborative work model and equipped with state-of-the-art technological systems to facilitate interaction with people who telework or with colleagues from other centers of the group. In addition, this investment has also allowed for the undergrounding of the parking lot, the expansion of outdoor garden areas, and the inauguration of a new canteen and an auditorium. The campus, says Rubio, is the first of the Roche Group's facilities to be completely free of CO2 emissions, is equipped with solar panels, and has an advanced system that minimizes water and energy consumption.
Rubio specifies that these 51 million correspond only to the physical infrastructure, that is, to the buildings, in the sense that a much larger figure, which she does not specify, would have to be added to this amount, destined to finance the various R&D projects housed on the campus. "In 2022, Roche invested 14.4 billion euros, 3% more, in research and development worldwide," she emphasizes, after highlighting that the Barcelona campus is part of an international network of 17 R&D centers of the group. "We are very proud to continue betting on our campus in Sant Cugat", adds the executive, who points out that more than half of the teams perform global functions, that is, they serve the subsidiaries that Roche has around the world.
With 125 years of history, Roche has two major business areas: Roche Pharmaceuticals (with sales of 46.6 billion euros) and Roche Diagnostics (18.1 billion). Another strategic business area, Roche Diabetes Care, depends on this second division, which in Spain has Josep Maria Vallmajó as general manager. The Spanish pharmaceutical business subsidiary is based in Madrid, while the Sant Cugat campus houses the headquarters of Roche Diagnostics and Roche Diabetes Care.
Roche Diagnostics is a global leader in technological equipment for performing diagnostic tests, and in the development of instruments and digital solutions for clinical analysis laboratories, research centers, doctors' offices, pharmacies, and also for patient self-monitoring. The company operates with brands such as Navify and Cobas and played a very prominent role during the pandemic by providing laboratories with the necessary technology to perform PCR tests and also commercializing millions of antigen tests.
40th anniversary of the first glucometer
For its part, Roche Diabetes Care is an independent unit dedicated to providing intelligent solutions for the control of diabetes, a chronic disease considered the epidemic of the 21st century. This division, which operates under the Accu-chek brand, sells test strips and glucometers, a device that allows measuring glucose levels at home and was invented exactly 40 years ago by Boehringer Mannheim, a company acquired by Roche in 1997. Another of Roche Diabetes' successes is MySugr, a mobile application that facilitates daily disease management and the uploading and recording of all data for patients and healthcare professionals.
On Roche's Barcelona campus, there is an R&D center for diagnostic solutions, meaning technology that includes both hardware and software development for the equipment sold to clinical analysis laboratories, pathological anatomy laboratories, microbiology laboratories, or blood banks. In parallel, in Sant Cugat, Roche Diagnostics has located a hub for the design, construction, implementation, and maintenance of digital platforms for the entire division worldwide. In this center, for example, data analysis systems or comprehensive disease management systems are developed.
According to Adriana Rubio, Sant Cugat is one of Roche's three main centers for developing digital solutions, along with those located in California and India.
Two of the technological products developed by Roche Diagnostics are Navify Tumor Board and Cobas Pulse-Edge. The first is a comprehensive tumor management system that facilitates oncologists' decision-making by displaying all available patient information on a single screen, whether images, analytical data, or all types of vital signs. For its part, Cobas Pulse-Edge is a digital platform for "connected glucose," that is, a technology that allows for comprehensive monitoring of diabetic patients by connecting various devices that control temperature, risk of infections, heart rate, or wound evolution.
The Sant Cugat campus also houses the commercial departments for Spain of each of these business units. In addition, the complex houses Roche Diagnostics' logistics center for Spain, Portugal, and North Africa, and a refurbishment and homologation workshop for diagnostic equipment for laboratories that serves the entire world. In parallel, it houses various teams that provide global support functions in areas such as quality or regulation, and a call center that handles inquiries from diabetic patients who use their glucometers in 20 countries.
The latest specialists to move into the new building constructed by Roche in Sant Cugat are 45 employees from Grifols' R&D area who have joined the Swiss company after the acquisition of the technology division for the diagnosis of hemostasis disorders.