Roche Chairman Christoph Franz in an interview published on Sunday in the Swiss newspaper NZZ am Sonntag told about his trust in the new drugs launched by Roche over the past two years: “We’ve had six medicines approved by regulators over this time period.” and among these there are multiple sclerosis drug Ocrevus, cancer immunotherapy Tecentriq and hemophilia medicine Hemlibra, all expected to have peak sales of well over $1 billion annually.

For Franz this is the solution to fight against the possible revenue losses due to some patents expired (or that will be shortly) exposing some of the Roche top seller to cheaper competition, as it will happen for  the trio of Avastin, Herceptin and Rituxan that all together count revenues for $20 billion-per-year.

He was also asked by the Swiss newspaper if U.S. President Donald Trump’s pledge to tackle high drug prices in the United States will have an impact on Roche too. His answer didn’t leave any space for interpretation: “To put it bluntly, if the Americans were to adopt the Swiss price system, Roche would have to cut thousands of research jobs, also in Switzerland.”

Read further on Reuters, NZZ am Sonntag