Joan Taltavull
Joan talks about what it’s like to work at Almirall.
What’s your name? What’s your role at Almirall?
I’m Joan Taltavull, Scientist and Program Leader in the Drug Discovery Department.
Why did you decide to dedicate yourself to science / R&D?
I first started my Chemistry Degree with the intention of becoming a Science teacher, but as I progressed in my studies and had closer contact with scientific experimentation and research, I knew that this was what I wanted to do in the future.
How does your work in R&D relate to helping patients in their daily lives?
As medicinal chemists, our goal is to design and synthesize new molecules that have a good pharmacological activity and safety profile so that they can eventually become new drugs. This is certainly a long-distance race, but if we succeed in our work, in a few years’ time patients may have a new product that will contain an active molecule that, in its origin, was nothing more than an idea we draw on a paper.
What do you think R&D brings to Almirall?
It gives us access to progress those projects we believe are most interesting and can make a difference in the treatment of diseases, either by acquiring external assets and progressing them forward or by creating our own projects and developing them in the way that suits us best.
What is your greatest motivation to carry out research in your day-to-day?
A researcher’s work is by definition a constant source of challenges, surprises and puzzling results that need to be analysed to extract rules that can be applied to generate better ideas. It is a continuous learning process and after almost 20 years of research work I still find it as stimulating (if not more) than the first day!