Peter Gmeiner

Medicinal Chemistry - An integral division within the German Pharmaceutical Society

The German Pharmaceutical Society (DPhG) founded a Division of Pharmaceutical/ Medicinal Chemistry in 1985. The original name Pharmaceutical Chemistry was transformed into Pharmaceutical/Medicinal Chemistry in 2000 to demonstrate that this community covers both, drug discovery topics of medicinal chemistry and the typical scope of the pharmaceutical chemistry which includes also analytical aspects.



Having more than 700 members, the aim of the Division of Pharmaceutical/Medicinal Chemistry is to support the development at universities and industrial research laboratories. The activities of the division include the organization of scientific conferences, the support of junior scientists and the development of guidelines for educational concepts and curricula in pharmacy studies and related disciplines.

Since 1987, the Division of Pharmaceutical/Medicinal Chemistry promotes an annual scientific conference. Together with local organizers modern topics in medicinal chemistry are selected and discussed together with international experts in the field. These meetings take place in spring, every year in a different place, which is usually a university city with a pharmaceutical department.

Since 2004, the conference has been termed Frontiers in Medicinal Chemistry being organized together with the Division of Medicinal Chemistry of the German Chemical Society (GDCh). The international symposium attracts approximately 250 to 300 participants from all over the world. Focusing on recent developments and trends including novel promising pharmaceutical targets, current technologies and particular highlights in medicinal chemistry, the scientific program includes plenary lectures, short lectures and poster presentations. Furthermore, oral communications of postdoctoral junior scientists are considered. It is the goal of the organizers to make this meeting an event of scientific excellence, attractive to both, industrial and academic scientists in medicinal chemistry and related fields of research.

Aiming to promote excellent junior scientists the division of Pharmaceutical/Medicinal Chemistry annually awards an excellent medicinal chemist with the Innovationspreis, in cooperation with the division of Medicinal Chemistry of the GDCh.

The division has also a great number of fruitful cooperations. As an example, there is the cooperation with the Division of Medicinal Chemistry of the Swiss Chemical Society resulting in the organization of the joint meeting Frontiers in Medicinal Chemistry every second year.

Finally, the Division of Pharmaceutical/Medicinal Chemistry detects current topics and distributes scientific statements and press releases with regard to current developments in drug discovery and pharmaceutical education.

Together with the Medicinal Chemistry Division of the GDCh, the Division of Pharmaceutical/Medicinal Chemistry will have the pleasure to host the XXIInd International Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry EFMC-ISMC 2012 on behalf of the European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry. The members of the division are proud of this honourable assignment hoping that a large international attendance will once again experience this conference as one of the worldwide leading Medicinal Chemistry meetings.

By Peter Gmeiner

 


Editor

Gabriele Costantino
Univ. Parma, IT

Editorial Committee

Erden Banoglu
Gazi Univ., TR

Leonardo Scapozza
Univ. of Geneve, CH

Wolfgang Sippl
Univ. Halle-Wittenberg, DE

Kristian Stromgaard
Univ. Copenhagen, DK

Mark Lansdell
Pfizer, UK

Executive Committee

Gerhard Ecker President
Roberto Pellicciari Past-Pres.
Koen Augustyns Secretary
Rasmus P.Clausen Treasurer
Javier Fernandez Member
Mark Bunnage Member
Peter Matyus Member

For more information please contact info@efmc.info

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