Genentech was named the winner of the Corporate Award for its consistent and impressive record in breakthrough research and innovation at The Economist’s Innovation Awards on  Monday November 25th, 2013.

The Corporate award celebrates Genentech’s track record in research and innovation. Genentech was founded by biochemist Herbert Boyer and venture capitalist Robert Swanson in 1976. It has been a wholly owned subsidiary of the Roche Group since 2009. Widely considered the founder of the biotech industry, the company changed the face of medicine when it became the first to scale up protein-manufacturing from the small quantities used for research to the much larger quantities needed to treat patients. The firm’s achievements include the development of the first recombinant DNA medicine ever marketed, the first targeted medicine approved to treat cancer and the first medicine shown to improve vision in the most common cause of blindness in adults.
Genentech’s research scientists have earned more than 10,500 patents and brought breakthrough medicines to people with serious diseases such as cystic fibrosis, cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and stroke. Overall, it has 35 medicines on the market and at least 30 more in clinical development. In 2012, sales of Genentech’s medicines in the United States were CHF13.856 billion.