Roche Applied Science

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see also Hoffmann–La Roche

Roche Applied Science, a business area of Roche Diagnostics, is part of Hoffmann–La Roche AG, Basel, Switzerland, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Roche Applied Science is one of the world's leading producers of reagents and systems for life science research, developing and marketing components for medical and biotechnological research. The focus is on e.g., DNA sequencing, gene expression, gene knockdown, transfection, and protein analysis. The company also offers reagents for the pharmaceuticals and diagnostics industries.

The company's headquarters is in Penzberg in Upper Bavaria, Germany; other main sites are Mannheim, Germany, Rotkreuz in Switzerland, and Branford in the US.

Roche Applied Science was founded in 1859 as Boehringer Mannheim, a developer of rare chemicals and pharmaceuticals. In the fifties, the bioreagents product line was developed according to the company’s own needs in diagnostics research. They were the first commercially important producer of restriction enzymes, they were the first supplier of Klenow enzyme for Sanger sequencing, and they are the first, and only, supplier of a system for the non-radioactive labeling of nucleic acid.

Over the last fifteen years, Roche Applied Science has transformed into a developer of innovative instruments, like the LightCycler instrument for automated PCR (polymerase chain reaction) and analysis of PCR products, and the Genome Sequencer system, a next generation ultrafast sequencing device that enables its users to use sequencing in fields where it has never been used before. It should be noted that Roche did not invent either technology but licenced them from other companies.