Roche Applied Science

Roche Applied Science is a global business entity in the biotechnology sector that produces reagents and systems for life sciences research, with an emphasis on molecular genetics and cell biology research needs.

Scope of business

Roche Applied Science produces reagents and systems for related to DNA sequencing, microarrays, gene expression, and cell analysis. Important fields of application of the company's products are the research and development areas of the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. The company also offers reagents and systems for the pharmaceuticals and diagnostics industries.

Locations

The company's headquarters is in Penzberg in Upper Bavaria, Germany; other main sites are Mannheim, Germany, Rotkreuz in Switzerland, Madison, WI, Pleasanton, CA, and Branford, CT in the United States.

History

Roche Applied Science was founded in 1859 as Boehringer Mannheim, a developer of rare chemicals and pharmaceuticals. In the 1950s, 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 only supplier of a system for the non-radioactive labeling of nucleic acid.

Applied science

Applied science is a discipline of science that applies existing scientific knowledge to develop more practical applications, like technology or inventions.

Within natural science, disciplines that are basic science, also called pure science, develop information to predict and perhaps explain—thus somehow understand—phenomena in the natural world. Applied science applies science to real world practice. This includes a broad range of science fields from Engineering to Child Care.

Applied science can also apply formal science, such as statistics and probability theory, as in epidemiology. Genetic epidemiology is an applied science applying both biological and statistical methods.

Branches of applied science

Engineering sciences include thermodynamics, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, statics, dynamics, mechanics of materials, kinematics, electromagnetism, materials science, earth sciences, engineering physics.

Medical sciences, for instance medical microbiology and its clinical virology, are applied sciences that apply biology toward medical knowledge and inventions, but not necessarily medical technology, whose development is more specifically biomedicine or biomedical engineering.