while at boston, the biomedical talent of the 27-year-old stähelin was spotted by the director of the pharmacology department of the sandoz corp. (now novartis ag.) basel, who visited suter's harvard medical school laboratory. after 6 months of training in the state-of-the art tissue-culture techniques in john f. enders' laboratory in boston, sponsored by sandoz, stähelin joined its pharmacology department in basel to head the newly created laboratory, then a research group working on cancer and immunology (1955–1979).