As China steps up efforts to adapt its healthcare system to support an aging population, Swiss drugmaker Roche is expanding its neuroscience footprint in the country.

The company is confident that advances in diagnosis and targeted therapies can reshape treatment for neurological disorders long considered among medicine's toughest challenges.

Historically, developing drugs for the brain has been notoriously difficult. The organ's complex mechanisms and protective blood-brain barrier block most medicines from entering. Data from IQVIA and the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development show that the clinical success rate for neurological drugs is only about 6 percent, while roughly 98 percent of small-molecule drugs fail to effectively cross the blood-brain barrier.

Yet, the urgency is growing. The World Health Organization has projected that neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, could become the world's second-leading cause of death by 2040, surpassing cancer-related deaths. In China alone, nearly 17 million people were living with Alzheimer's and related dementias in 2021, according to the China Alzheimer Report 2025. Separately, the China Parkinson Disease Report 2025 estimated that the country had more than 5 million Parkinson's patients in 2021, accounting for more than 43 percent of the worldwide patient population.

In response, China has stepped up policy support. In 2025, the National Health Commission and 14 other government departments jointly launched a national action plan for dementia prevention and care through 2030. The initiative aims to strengthen everything from early cognitive screening for high-risk seniors to rehabilitation and elderly care, ultimately fostering a more dementia-friendly society.

Against this backdrop, Roche is deepening its investment in China's neuroscience sector, spanning drug development, diagnostics, manufacturing and digital health technologies.

"Neuroscience is not a fashionable area we entered recently because the market became hot," said Janet Chen, vice-president for ophthalmology and neuroscience at Roche Pharma China.

"Roche has invested in this field for nearly a century. We are long-term builders rather than followers."

The company's neuroscience history dates back to the 1920s, and its Parkinson's treatment Madopar — known generically as levodopa/benserazide — has remained a standard therapy for decades. More recently, Roche has expanded into neuroimmunology and neurodegenerative diseases with products targeting multiple sclerosis, spinal muscular atrophy and neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder.

According to Roche's 2025 annual report, its neuroscience business generated 9.8 billion Swiss francs ($10.8 billion) in revenue last year, up 11 percent year-on-year. Its multiple sclerosis drug Ocrevus alone posted sales of 7 billion Swiss francs.

Broader industry focus on neuroscience is also rebounding. Advances in biomarkers, imaging and antibody engineering revive investor interest after years of costly failures in Alzheimer's research, an area long viewed within the industry as a drug-development "graveyard".

Today, Roche and other multinational drugmakers are moving beyond simply managing symptoms, seeking therapies that could actually slow neurodegeneration. One closely watched experimental drug is Trontinemab, an Alzheimer's therapy utilizing Roche's Brainshuttle technology to ferry large-molecule drugs across the blood-brain barrier.

"The challenge with traditional antibodies is that very little actually reaches the brain," said Kevin Li, vice-president of medical affairs at Roche Pharma China. "Brainshuttle acts like a transport system, allowing higher drug exposure in the brain with lower peripheral doses."

Li said early clinical data showed the treatment could remove more than 90 percent of toxic amyloid plaques while maintaining relatively low rates of brain swelling, a major side effect associated with earlier Alzheimer's drugs.

But treatment is only half the battle. Roche is also investing heavily in diagnostics, reflecting an industry shift toward catching neurodegenerative diseases before irreversible damage occurs. For instance, new blood-based biomarkers could make Alzheimer's screening much more accessible by replacing invasive spinal taps in some settings.

Chen Biao, director of the Parkinson's Disease Clinical Research and Treatment Center at Xuanwu Hospital of Capital Medical University in Beijing, said late diagnosis remains one of the biggest obstacles in treating neurodegenerative diseases.

"Diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's may have an incubation period of 15 to 20 years before obvious symptoms appear," Chen said.

"By the time patients seek treatment, much of the damage is already irreversible."

For doctors and patients, the near-term goal is increasingly focused on delaying disease onset and slowing disability progression rather than achieving complete cures, he said.

"If we can postpone onset from age 60 to 80, that would fundamentally change patients' quality of life and reduce the broader social burden," he added.