When he founded the Abbott Alkaloidal Company in 1888, the young doctor and pharmacy owner Wallace C. Abbott had no idea that it would become one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies for diagnostics and medical devices.

Today, the Illinois-based company develops, produces and distributes high-quality drugs, medical devices and clinical nutrition that meet the highest quality standards. This is regularly ensured during GMP inspections by authorities from the USA (FDA), the EU (EMA) or Russia (SID & GP) or the EAEU (Eurasian Economic Union) and the supervisory authorities of their respective member countries.

The beginnings of Abbott: it all started with a granulate - blog post by the interpreters and translators of GMP-inspection.com on the history of the American pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturer

Wallace C. Abbott’s father had little interest in academic education. Consequently, the future entrepreneur’s childhood was characterized by hard work on his father’s farm and, at first, offered no prospects for a successful career. But Wallace's mother eventually persuaded her husband to send Wallace to a normal school. [specialized institution designed to train teachers by instilling standard pedagogical norms]. Three years later, with his teaching diploma in hand, he went to a secondary school in Vermont to prepare for his university studies. Abbott was not lacking in ambition; he vowed to complete the four-year program in just two years. His future college major was already clear – Wallace C. Abbott wanted to become a doctor.

After graduation and a year at Dartmouth College, Abbott enrolled in medical school at the University of Michigan. To make ends meet, he did not shy away from hard work – in Vermont he had chopped wood and worked as a cook, now he mopped floors and worked as an orderly in the medical school hospital. In 1885, Wallace C. Abbott graduated as a doctor. He learned from a family friend that his brother wanted to sell his practice in the Ravenswood neighborhood on the north side of Chicago. And so Abbott moved to Chicago with his wife in the summer of 1885.

Wallace C. Abbott set up a pharmacy in the house where the couple lived. In those days, drugs were still prepared with a mortar and pestle. Plants and herbs were crushed and mixed with water or alcohol. Precise dosing was impossible and the taste of such mixtures made patients shudder – a far cry from today's GMP standards. When a regular customer of his pharmacy, the doctor William T. Thackeray, set up a company to produce ‘dosimetric granules’ using a new process, Abbott himself became a customer. However, the goods supplied did not live up to the promised quality, so Abbott decided to go into business himself. In 1888, Abbott began manufacturing alkaloid granules in the kitchen of his home – and, without realizing it, laid the foundations for a successful company. As you read on in this blog post by our pharmaceutical interpreters and GMP translators, you will learn about the effective measures Abbott used to turn his small family business into a global company for pharmaceutical products and medical devices.

From physician Wallace C. Abbott’s family business of to global company Abbott Laboratories

The granules produced were characterized by a more precise and therefore more effective dosage of the respective active pharmaceutical ingredient – which remains one of the most important quality criteria of Good Manufacturing Practice to this day. Word spread quickly. Abbott's revenue quadrupled in just two years. The first employee was taken on in 1890 – until then it had only been a purely family-run business. In 1900, the Abbott Alkaloidal Company was entered in the Illinois Commercial Register. This marked the beginning of a period of unprecedented expansion. By 1902, one in four doctors in the United States was subscribing to the company's own magazine, Alkaloidal Clinic, and by 1910 branches had been opened in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, London and Bombay. In 1915, the company was renamed Abbott Laboratories – a name it retains to this day. It was in the laboratory that the company’s first synthetic drug was developed, which was launched in 1916: Chlorazen, an antiseptic developed to treat wounded soldiers. By the time company founder Wallace C. Abbott died in 1921, his company had long since established itself on the market.

Abbott is a global market leader - and that includes biotechnology and clinical diagnostics: A handful of examples of the pharmaceutical product and medical device giant's collaborations

A production facility for antibiotics in Puerto Rico (1967), a joint venture with Takeda Chemical Industries from Japan (1977), the acquisition of BASF's pharmaceutical division (2000) – the internationalization of the company made it a major customer for GMP translators and pharmaceutical interpreters. The product range also expanded steadily. In 1973, a separate division for biotechnology, radiopharmaceuticals and clinical diagnostics was founded – the latter developed into an important pillar for Abbott. In the same year, the company launched its first food supplement Ensure, a nutritional powder that is still very popular today. The quality of the medicines and medical products is checked at regular intervals by the authorities of various countries during GMP inspections by the licensing and regulatory authorities of the respective target market countries. Professional pharmaceutical interpreters (and GMP translators qualified for specialist pharmaceutical translations of relevant documents and SOPs) are used to translate or interpret complex Good Manufacturing Practice topics into the respective national language. If required, the pharmaceutical interpreters and translators from GMP-inspection.com in Nuremberg are happy to support you with your upcoming GMP inspection in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and other countries!

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