Our Networks
The scientific community needs high-performance facilitating networks to foster and catalyze collaborative science worldwide. Roche developed two initiatives to unite expertises for humankind’s benefit: ImCore in 2016 and Insights Lab in 2021.
ImCore: Immunotherapy Centers of Research Excellence
The imCore network is an international scientific collaboration effort between the most recognized institutions in cancer immunotherapy to catalyze research for cancer treatments.
Created in November 2016 by Roche-Genentech, imCore opened up and united traditionally isolated Roche R&D divisions: Pharmaceuticals, Diagnostics, and Genentech. This pioneering initiative then offered access and cross-analysis of worldwide patient data for the first time in biomedical research history, marking the birth of large-scale professional data processing. The imCore network currently supports 27 leading cancer research institutions from 10 countries worldwide: experts from Roche and external centers of excellence collaborate to identify and prioritize the most promising approaches in cancer immunotherapy.
Roche selected each center by thoroughly reviewing 4 fundamental criteria:
• Access to patients in the field of cancer immunotherapy.
• Expertise diversity.
• Ongoing research.
• Advanced technology platforms.
Through imCore, outstanding scientific teams share a common R&D framework, coordinating research by aligning methodology, biological analysis, and overall science.
Ongoing projects encompass:
• Pre-clinical studies to characterize cancer immune phenotypes and immune response as well as escape mechanisms.
• Clinical trials to evaluate new therapies and novel combination strategies.
• Translational research to drive innovation from the lab to the clinic and back again in a continuous ‘learning loop’.
With nearly 60 collaborative research projects already underway since its launch, and proposals for many more, imCore already shows promise for advancing immunotherapy research to benefit patients with cancer.
Insights Lab: inventing the future of healthcare and biomedicine
Insights Lab is a catalyst for collaborative and multidisciplinary data-driven research and innovation.
As biomedical science moves into a new era, with the coalescence of data, biotechnological and biomedical innovations, in 2021, Pharma International Informatics (PIIX) and Institut Roche created Insights Lab, a Roche data-intensive think tank team to foster collaborative innovation and research.
Built on PIIX’s solid infrastructure, driving Roche’s digital strategy, and streamlined by the Institut’s expertise, Insights Lab supports the whole Roche value chain, from diagnostics and pharmaceuticals research to go-to-market considerations.
Insights Lab operates by:
• Connecting both internal and external biomedical, AI, and mathematical modeling expertises.
• Catalyzing and managing data-intensive collaborative research and innovation.
• Facilitating data infrastructure access and deployment.
Insights Lab supports and collaborates with:
• Roche and Genentech R&D, including teams in informatics, bioinformatics, and AI.
• External biomedical, computational, AI, and mathematics teams and stakeholders.
• ImCore, EU-Maths-In, and other networks of excellence.
Through high-value collaborations, Insights Lab aims to advance and accelerate open science with scientific output (publications, patents, and data generation), data sharing and interconnectivity, and IT infrastructure performance.