Editorial

Dear Colleague,

The new year 2009 has begun with the change in the presidency of EFMC. Roberto Pellicciari changed over Gerhard Ecker. In the next pages you will find an Interview in which Gerhard presents his vision and his commitments for the upcoming years along with some anticipations on future activities of EFMC. Gerhard has served as Editor of MedChemWatch since the very beginning, and now he passed me the responsibility of consolidating the success of the newsletter, a task that I have accepted with enthusiasm and that I will share with an excellent editorial board and technical assistants.

In this issue, you will also find a conference report on the XX-ISMC, held in Vienna last September, and a presentation of the EUROPIN project, a LLP-founded initiative for the implementation of an Europen Doctorate program in Pharmacoinformatics, which is now approaching the phase of student recruitment.

Finally, I strongly invite you to contact me or the members of the Editorial Board for suggestions and, particularly welcome, active contributions. In the next issues, we will implement new columns, such as a new format for lab presentations, which will also be extended to SMEs and biotechs. Moreover, we will experiment new features for interactive commenting of articles, with the aim of promoting this newsletter as a factual meeting point of opinions and ideas among European medicinal chemists.

Gabriele Costantino
Editor