Roche Accelerator wins three awards for innovation excellence

The Roche Accelerator has recently claimed three impactful awards in China for its leadership and excellence in delivering and fostering breakthrough innovation for the health-care ecosystem.

The honors include the Healthy China Innovation Best Practice Case 2022 and the Corporate Social Responsibility Excellence Award 2022. Dr Tang Qiusong, head of Roche Accelerator, was selected as one of the 2022 Forbes China 100 Outstanding Overseas Returnees.

Thanks to its outstanding contribution to health-care innovation under the Healthy China Initiative, the Roche Accelerator was named Healthy China Innovation Best Practice Case 2022.

The campaign was sponsored by the General Office of the Healthy China Promotion Committee and initiated by People's Health under People's Daily Online, aiming to honor excellent cases that bolster health-care technology, cultivate health-care professionals, and develop health industry clusters.

The Roche Accelerator won the honor in competition with nearly 400 cases for its best practice and wide impact in spearheading innovation and empowering the health-care ecosystem in China.

Another recent accolade for the Roche Accelerator is the Corporate Social Responsibility Excellence Award 2022, which was presented by Shanghai Daily. The award was sponsored by the Information Office of Shanghai Municipality and the Shanghai United Media Group, honoring enterprises that actively deliver on social responsibility and contribute to high-quality development and social governance in the city.

The Roche Accelerator stood out among nearly 500 Chinese and foreign companies for its contribution to aid startups in achieving key breakthroughs, help cultivate the innovation ecosystem in Zhangjiang and the sci-tech innovation center in Shanghai, unleash the potential of local health-care sector, and support the development of a global cutting-edge, impactful health-care industry cluster.

As a recognition on both personal and corporate levels, Dr Tang was named one of the 2022 Forbes China 100 Outstanding Overseas Returnees. The list was initiated by Forbes China to honor Chinese elites with overseas study background who have the biggest potential to shape the future of China. Tang was honored for his achievements in leading his team to clinch powerful innovation partnerships over the past two years.

"We are honored to receive these awards for our achievements in innovation. While empowering startups, the Roche Accelerator engages all stakeholders in the ecosystem to maximize mutual benefits and development," Tang said. "In the future, we are confident to make full use of the open, organic and efficient collaboration ecosystem to help startups accelerate disruptive innovation, advance early R&D into clinical stage, and support local startups to transform cutting-edge innovative ideas into next-generation therapeutics or diagnostics."

In 2021, with an investment of nearly 300 million yuan (US$43.48 million), the Roche Accelerator was officially launched with the support of the local government and partners. As the company's first in-house accelerator globally, the Roche Accelerator is set to accelerate health-care innovation and empower the local health-care ecosystem in China.

The Roche Accelerator encourages innovative partnerships and provides tailor-made support for startups in pharma, diagnostics, personalized health care, and digital and AI-driven health care. These high-quality startups will have access to certain parts of Roche's full-spectrum research and commercialization resources so as to accelerate early research and development and clinical adoption.

The Roche Accelerator will provide members with specific support and resources, including research funding support, cooperation opportunities, R&D expertise and advanced facilities, to help each of them transform science into medicines and healthcare solutions.

Located in the heart of Zhangjiang in the Pudong New Area, Shanghai, the Roche Accelerator building covers an area of over 5,000 square meters and will be home to state-of-the-art laboratories, offices, and collaboration spaces for Accelerator members and will be inaugurated in the spring of 2023.

By the end of 2022, 11 local startups had stood out from more than 220 applicants and become the Roche Accelerator's member companies. So far, the existing member companies have reached eight research and early development partnerships with the China Innovation Center of Roche (CICoR) to explore new science and technology platforms.

In the future, Roche will continue to work with partners to gear up drug discovery and development, upgrade "Made in China" to "Created in China," and enable Chinese R&D to serve patients around the world.