In 2007, EFMC will be involved in three major Medicinal Chemistry Events in Europe.

• The Austrian-German-Hungarian-Italian-Polish-Slovenian Joint Meeting on Medicinal Chemistry, organised by the Section for Medicinal Chemistry of the Slovenian Pharmaceutical Society in June in Portoroz continues the tradition started 1999 in Taormina, bringing together scientists from eastern and western Europe.
• The ASMC 07 meeting in St. Petersburg follows the very successful event in Moscow 2004, focusing on Synthetic and Medicinal Chemistry.
• Last but not least, the Division of Medicinal Chemistry of the Italian Chemical Society hosts the first event jointly organised by the ACS-Division of Medicinal Chemistry and EFMC, which will take place in October in Siena and will focus on oncology and neurodegenerative diseases.

Below you will find a conference report for the 5th Joint Meeting on Medicinal Chemistry, Portorož, written by Aleš Obreza and Lucija Peterlin Mašic.

August 27-31, 2007, St. Petersburg, Russia
More information: http://www.asmc07.org

October 7-9, 2007 Siena, Italy
More information: http://www.acsefmc-italy2007.it/home.htm

5th Austrian-German-Hungarian-Italian-Polish-Slovenian Joint Meeting on Medicinal Chemistry (JMMC) Portorož, June 17-21, 2007

In June 2007 the 5th Joint Meeting on Medicinal Chemistry was organized by the Medicinal Chemistry Section of the Slovenian Pharmaceutical Society under the auspices of the European Federation of Medicinal Chemistry. The symposium took place in Portorož, in the Slovenian Adriatic coast, where the clean sea and the majestic Alps come close to an embrace.

It continued the tradition of previous joint meetings held in Italy (Taormina 1999), Hungary (Budapest 2001), Poland (Krakow 2003) and Austria (Vienna 2005). The 5th Joint Meeting on Medicinal Chemistry focused on important new developments in the following topics: anti-infectives, drugs for cardiovascular and metabolic disorders, enzymes and receptors as targets for new drugs, computer-aided drug design and discovery, emerging strategies in drug discovery, and medicinal chemistry case studies.

The inaugural plenary lecture was delivered by the Nobel laureate Prof. Robert Huber who opened the event with his interesting talk, entitled Proteins and Their Structures in Basic Science and Medicine in which he presented the complex role of proteins in living organisms, their dynamic nature and the role of X-ray crystallography in the identification of 3D-structure of macromolecules. The scientific programme comprised seven plenary lectures, twenty keynote lectures, fifteen oral communications and 172 poster presentations (http://www.jmmc2007.si) and was supplemented with a rich social programme in one of the most popular congress and vacation resorts in Slovenia. We are pleased that many students participated in this event which allowed young scientists to meet established medicinal chemists for exciting exchange of ideas in the latest advances in drug discovery and development.

In summary, the 5th Joint Meeting on Medicinal Chemistry in Portorož 2007 was a scientifically and socially very rewarding event, providing an opportunity for more than 300 participants from 31 countries worldwide for the exchange of scientific information and for establishing personal contacts. At the end, the members of the organizing committee wish a successful organization to our successors for the 6th JMMC, which will take place in Sicily in 2009.

Aleš Obreza and Lucija Peterlin Mašic