Genentech

Genentech, Inc.

Type	Wholly owned subsidiary of Roche
Industry	Biotechnology
Founded	1976; 41 years ago (1976)
Headquarters	South San Francisco, California, United States
Key people	Ian T. Clark, CEO Sandra J. Horning, M.D. Michael D. Varney, Ph.D. Frederick C. Kentz, III, Legal Timothy L. Moore Nancy Vitale, HR Severin Schwan, Chairman of Genentech Board of Directors, CEO of Roche Group
Products	Avastin, Herceptin, Rituxan, Perjeta, Kadcyla, Gazyva, Tarceva, Tecentriq, , Esbriet, Cotellic, Alecensa, Zelboraf, Nutropin, , Lucentis, Xolair, Activase, Xeloda, Boniva, Cathflo Activase, TNKase, CellCept, Pegasys, Pulmozyme, Tamiflu, Valcyte, Anaprox, Cytovene, EC-Naprosyn, Erivedge, Fuzeon, Invirase, Klonopin, Kytril, Naprosyn, Rocephin, Roferon-A, Romazicon, Valium, Xenical, Zenapax
Owner	Hoffmann-La Roche
Number of employees	14,815 (September 12, 2016)
Website	www.gene.com

Genentech, Inc., is a biotechnology corporation which became a subsidiary of Roche in 2009. Genentech Research and Early Development operates as an independent center within Roche.

As of September 2016, Genentech employed 14,815 people.

The company was founded in 1976 by venture capitalist Robert A. Swanson and biochemist Herbert Boyer. Boyer is considered to be a pioneer in the field of recombinant DNA technology. In 1973, Boyer and his colleague Stanley Norman Cohen demonstrated that restriction enzymes could be used as "scissors" to cut DNA fragments of interest from one source, to be ligated into a similarly cut plasmid vector. While Cohen returned to the laboratory in academia, Swanson contacted Boyer to found the company. Boyer worked with Arthur Riggs and Keiichi Itakura from the Beckman Research Institute, and the group became the first to successfully express a human gene in bacteria when they produced the hormone somatostatin in 1977.David Goeddel and Dennis Kleid were then added to the group, and contributed to its success with synthetic human insulin in 1978.

In 1990 F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG acquired a majority stake in Genentech.

In 2006 Genentech acquired Tanox in its first acquisition deal. Tanox had started developing Xolair and development was completed in collaboration with Novartis and Genentech; the acquisition allowed Genentech to keep more of the revenue.