Credit: Reuters/Aly Song
The logo of Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche is seen outside the Shanghai Roche Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. headquarters in Shanghai May 22, 2014.
Roche has a strong suite of cancer drugs and has pushed ahead with plans to develop 'follow-on' medicines it hopes will replace or breathe new life into older treatments.
It is banking on a strong ramp-up of these products to defend its market share once copycat versions of biotech drugs, known as biosimilars, arrive.
Seragon is the second notable acquisition in as many months for Roche, which bought privately held U.S. gene-sequencing firm Genia Technologies for up to $350 million in June, securing access to a technology that should allow it to decipher human genes more quickly at a cheaper cost.
Seragon was spun out from Aragon Pharmaceuticals last year when that firm was bought for up to $1 billion by Johnson & Johnson.
(Reporting By Katharina Bart; Editing by Maria Sheahan and Matt Driskill)
