The Antica Farmacia di San Filippo Neri in Parma, Fico Creative Studio, 2020
Recipes handwritten by Giacomo Chiesi, with a note on the preparation of ink, 1930/40s
Copy of Trattato di Chimica Analitica by F. P. Treadwell belonging to Giacomo Chiesi, 1922
“I remember the atmosphere of the moment you first step into a laboratory, because you don’t spend the first years in a laboratory, you spend them studying books and you come to the stage where you have a set recipe, you have the ingredients, you put them together and you create something tangible which until yesterday you could only have bought in a pharmacy.”
Erika Cuoghi, Chiesi researcher
“My job is to try and mix together ingredients that have been newly discovered, because some of them aren’t known at first; so you look for this new, magical ingredient that can target the aim, the objective of what you’re trying to treat. But it’s not enough to discover the new, magical ingredient, you have to mix it together with other known things.”
Erika Cuoghi, Chiesi researcher
Demonstration image of the medicine A-Col, 1950s
“For companies, the story doesn’t end there, with the launch of the drug on the market, because they continue monitoring with what are called Phase-4 studies—those famous pharmacovigilance studies where we continue monitoring the safety of the product being sold and so exposed to a population that is numerically much greater than that used in clinical trials.”
Erika Cuoghi, Chiesi researcher
Chiesi Research and Development Centre, 2014
The Monastery of St. John the Evangelist in Parma
The Antica Farmacia di San Filippo Neri in Parma, Fico Creative Studio, 2020
The Antica Farmacia di San Filippo Neri in Parma, Fico Creative Studio, 2020
“All I can say is we have rooms that are pretty much the same. The scales may be more or less accurate, more or less as big, but we do the same identical thing. We definitely weigh up our ingredients, which then move on, and we definitely have areas where we keep a range of molecules and principles that then go and add to our formulations.”
Erika Cuoghi, Chiesi researcher
“The aspect of treatment is definitely one of the aspects that is taken into consideration. What is especially focused on in companies today, especially in the more innovative pharmaceutical companies, is trying to cover what are known as areas with an “unmet medical need,” meaning areas in which an exact solution still hasn’t been found, the drug needed to cover a specific pathology.”
Erika Cuoghi, Chiesi researcher
“The development of a drug really does take a long time, ranging from twelve to fourteen years, requiring major investment by the pharmaceutical companies that decide to take that road.”
Erika Cuoghi, Chiesi researcher
