In the first three months of 2012 Group sales rose 2% in constant currencies to 11.0 billion Swiss francs. The Pharmaceuticals Division's sales increased 2% to 8.6 billion Swiss francs. Excluding Tamiflu, sales for the Group and Pharma rose 3%.

Takeda America Holdings, Inc. and URL Pharma have entered into a definitive agreement to acquire URL Pharma - a privately-held pharmaceutical company headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for an upfront payment of $800 million and future performance-based contingent earn out payments.

UCB is announcing a new initiative for World Parkinson's Disease Day 2012 that is designed to support communication around all aspects of Parkinson's Disease (PD). The Parkinson's Well-Being Map™ is a visual tool designed to help people with PD discuss their health status and well-being with their care teams.

Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN) and KAI Pharmaceuticals today announced an agreement under which Amgen will acquire KAI, a privately held pharmaceutical company based in South San Francisco.

Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (Takeda) has joined the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) to fund collective drug research aimed at bringing new, more effective medicines to market faster. The SGC is based at the Universities of Toronto, Canada, and Oxford, England.

Roche (SIX: RO, ROG; OTCQX: RHHBY) today sent a second letter to shareholders of Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ: ILMN) urging them to tender their shares into Roche's increased offer and vote for Roche's independent director nominees and other proposals at the 2012 Illumina annual meeting to be held on 18 April 2012.

Roche (SIX: RO, ROG; OTCQX: RHHBY) released the following statement in response to the announcement by Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ: ILMN) that its Board of Directors has recommended that shareholders not tender their shares to Roche's increased offer.