Chemistry International
Vol. 21, No. 3
May 1999
Reports
from IUPAC-Sponsored Symposia
15th International
Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry
6 - 10 September 1998,
Edinburgh, Scotland,
United Kingdom
This symposium was organized by The Royal Society of
Chemistry's Perkin Division and the Biological and Medicinal Chemistry
Sector of the Industrial Division on behalf of the European Federation
of Medicinal Chemistry (EFMC) , with the support of IUPAC, the American
Chemical Society's Division of Medicinal Chemistry, and the Asian Federation
of Medicinal Chemistry. Symposium Chairman was Dr. D. Buckle, Chairman
of the Biological and Medicinal Chemistry Sector of The Royal Society
of Chemistry.
The series "International Symposia on Medicinal Chemistry"
has been organized in Europe since the 1960s. Recent meetings in the
series have taken place in 1992 in Basel, Switzerland; in 1994 in Paris,
France; and in 1996 in Maastricht, The Netherlands.
The 1998 symposium was held in Edinburgh's International
Conference Centre. Scientific sessions included 8 plenary lectures,
52 invited lectures running in 3 parallel sessions, and 2 poster sessions
(comprising 365 posters) covering new technologies for drug discovery,
ion channels, intracellular signalling, glycine antagonists, predicting
DMPK, growth factors, glycochemistry and glycobiology, 7TM receptors,
and protease inhibition. The program was supported by 365 posters.
Medicinal chemistry is an interdisciplinary science of
great range, with chemistry as its core and with the purpose of producing
excellent new pharmaceuticals. The field has made remarkable strides
to accompany recent rapid progress in related sciences. The development
of a new drug is characterized by new technologies such as high-throughput
screening methods and synthesis of combinatorial libraries.
More than 1000 medicinal chemists, mainly from pharmaceutical
industries, attended the symposium from 48 different countries around
the world. Seventy-one percent of the attendees were from countries
other than the United Kingdom.
Plenary lectures were held in the Centre's Pentland suite
and invited lectures in three auditoriums. All the conference lecture
rooms were well appointed, and the poster sessions were conducted in
two separate spacious rooms. Participants enjoyed a buffet reception
(sponsored by Astra Charnwood) and a symposium dinner. Symposium activities
included evening events, excursions, and an accompanying program for
spouses.
Proceedings from the 15th International Symposium on Medicinal
Chemistry will be published in Autumn 1999 by The Royal Society of Chemistry
as a book, Medicinal Chemistry into the Millennium, edited by
M. M. Campbell and I. A. Blagborough.
The 16th International Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry
will be held in Bologna, Italy, 18-20 September 2000, with Professor
Carlo Melchiorre ([email protected])
of the University of Bologna as Chairman. The 17th meeting will be held
in Barcelona, Spain, 1-5 September 2002, with Professor Ferran Sanz
of Instituto Municipal d'Investigacio Medica, Barcelona as Chairman.
Dr.
Naofumi Koga
President, Medicinal Chemistry Section
(VII.M) of IUPAC