Drug Hunter’s Post

Drug Hunters in Basel!🇨🇭 Basel has such a lovely, close community of drug discovery professionals - it was definitely harder to sit people together that didn't already know each other this time! I never got to visit Basel while at Genentech so it was nice to finally put some faces to names from Roche here. Half the group had some connection to Novartis and the (smaller) half had some connection to Roche, though half the group now work in biotech companies of all sizes (Idorsia Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Monte Rosa Therapeutics, FoRx Therapeutics, Amphilix AG etc.). Half the group had German as a native tongue, with the other half originally speaking French. Native English-speakers were definitely outnumbered, but surprisingly the overwhelmingly majority of folks in the room were trained at some point in the US! Good conversation about what the future of small molecules will look like, how AI will impact drug discovery, and the future of biotech funding - topics as top of mind in Europe as they are at home in the US. A particularly poignant story was that of an industry leader who is themself a cancer survivor. Thank you to everyone who joined us on a busy back-to-school week for a spontaneous event! Olivier Corminboeuf, Guido Koch, Laetitia Martin, Lorenz Mayr, Stefanie Mesch, Patrick Schnider, Bernhard Fasching, Jean-Baptiste Langlois, Laura McAllister, Henrik Möbitz, Olivier Querolle, Guillaume Lapointe, Sandrine Hell, Johannes Diesel, Andreas Buckl, Léa Bouché, Juergen Hinrichs, Daniel Bauer, Matthew Hesse, and special thanks again to Dennis Koester for organizing a fantastic trip! Can't wait to come back. Off to Frankfurt tomorrow! Guet Nacht!