Roche outlines plans to move towards autonomous AI labs

ZURICH, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche outlined plans to move towards autonomous AI labs to speed up research and development discovery at its pharma investor day on Monday.

Roche is committed to "AI independence" in R&D and has recently started building autonomous AI-driven labs, Aviv Regev, executive vice president of Genentech Research and Early Development, said.

• About 2 billion Swiss francs ($2.41 billion) from R&D savings are set to be reallocated to programs and productivity initiatives by 2026, the company said

• By 2030 Roche aims to bring up to 20 new molecular entities (NMEs) to the market

• The company noted a jump in phase III success rate to >80% in 2026 year-to-date from 65% in 2025

• Regev said 40% of pipeline decisions from the fourth quarter of 2025 through the second quarter of 2026 had a tracked AI and/or computational contribution

• The company said it is on track for its AI tool Target Nexus to contribute to 80% of research portfolio decisions by the end of 2026

• Roche recently opened its Boston Innovation Center that will in part focus on applications of AI and machine learning in drug development

(Reporting by Patricia Weiss in Frankfurt, Patrick Wingrove in London and Marleen Kaesebier in Zurich; Editing by Jan Harvey)