Roche

Roche is a pharmaceutical industry giant that has partnered with Chinese biotech startups in drug discovery and development. Per a 2019 FreeS Fund report, XtalPi — a computational drug-design company in FreeS's portfolio — had reached cooperation agreements with Roche and Pfizer . In the spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) space, Roche was developing Risdiplam, an oral small-molecule SMN2 splicing modifier intended for all SMA types, which at the time was under FDA priority review . Shen Hong, head of the Roche Shanghai Innovation Center, appeared at FreeS Fund's 2020 biotech summit to discuss China's trajectory toward first-in-class drug development .