Reference
Where these molecules were found
These desks found, tested, or standardised the five medicines on this floor. History explains the hold.
Kitasato Institute
5-9-1 Shirokane, Minato City, Tokyo 108-8641, Japan
Satoshi Ōmura's Tokyo laboratory, where a soil-microbe screening programme first turned up the avermectin lead that became ivermectin.
Merck & Co. (Rahway campus)
126 East Lincoln Avenue, Rahway, NJ 07065, USA
Where William Campbell's team converted avermectin into ivermectin and, in 1987, launched the Mectizan donation programme.
Parke-Davis / Gödecke AG
Mooswaldallee 1-9, 79090 Freiburg, Germany
The Warner-Lambert research arm where gabapentin was designed as a GABA analogue and later developed as Neurontin.
Former Pfizer Discovery Laboratories
Ramsgate Road, Sandwich, Kent CT13 9NJ, United Kingdom
The Kent site where sildenafil was trialled for angina before its erectile side effect redirected the whole programme.
ICOS Corporation (historic)
22021 20th Avenue SE, Bothell, WA 98021, USA
The Washington biotech that discovered tadalafil and partnered with Eli Lilly to bring Cialis to market.
Bayer AG Pharmaceuticals
Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse 217, 42117 Wuppertal, Germany
The German laboratories behind vardenafil, later sold as Levitra and the orodispersible Staxyn.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration
10903 New Hampshire Avenue, Silver Spring, MD 20993, USA
The regulator whose current prescribing information anchors every dose and warning quoted across this clinic.
World Health Organization
Avenue Appia 20, 1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland
Keeper of the Model List of Essential Medicines, which carries ivermectin among its core global medicines.
Why the history sits on the floor
A soil screen in Tokyo explains why ivermectin is a parasite tablet, not a viral one. A GABA analogue that missed its first target explains why gabapentin is titrated slowly. An angina miss in Sandwich explains why sildenafil carries a nitrate hold. Each card points back at the desk that shaped it.