Bayer spies- BEWARE-->

The team at the Novartis facility in St. Aubin are totally on to you! Luckily, we’re all innocent little Texas A&M students, so there were no problems. Even before our visit, Novartis had already earned a special place in my heart because they were nice enough to host our group (where other companies said no) AND the hotel we stayed in was very, very nice.

Visiting the Novartis headquarters was exciting. They put together a well rounded tour (Both in Basel and St. Aubin) that showed us important aspects of the scientific work they do as well as the business and marketing they do. It was interesting to be able to follow their setup all the way from the beginning with discovery of new chemical substances through development of the molecule (including testing for efficacy and safety, working on formulations, and determining expiration dates) all the way to designing of the packaging and marketing the final product. The time and money that gets invested into just a single product is amazing. Novartis recently discovered a new class of parasitacides (amino-acetonitril derivatives) that is the first new class to come on the market in about 25 years. It’s new enough that we didn’t talk about it in pharmacology last semester, so it’s something to look into more when we get home. It was gratifying to see how much avoiding antimicrobial resistance is a factor in every aspect of their research and development. I’d be interested to see some company facilities in the US in order to compare various views on the subject.

Basel and the surrounding area are absolutely beautiful, and our amazing luck with the weather continued. The city tour through Basel was an exceptionally good idea because we otherwise might have just written off the city as a pharmaceutical center and never known of its historical aspects. We got to see the grave of Erasmus of Rotterdam (who I remember from AP European history, yes!) and the Munster as well as some amazing views of the city and country around it. We even had time for a bit of shopping! Can’t wait to finally get to see Berlin after Basel, even though it’s our last stop on our trip.