Society News on Activities 2009 and 2010

 

Recent Events and Awards:

The RSC BMCS held its flagship conference – the 15th RSC-SCI Medicinal Chemistry Symposium – in Cambridge during 6-9 September 2009. This biennial event witnessed an exceptional field of speakers, mostly from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, and was attended by almost 300 participants. Consistent with the established reputation of the event, lively and highly informed discussions followed each talk and these reflections continued informally over lunch, dinner and in the Bar well into evening! One of the highlights of the meeting was the presentation of the BMCS 2009 Malcolm Campbell award to Dr LWL Woo and Prof BVL Potter from the University of Bath and Dr A Purohit and the late Prof MJ Reed from Imperial College for their discovery of STX64, a novel agent against steroid sulfatase which has demonstrated evidence of efficacy in the clinic for the treatment of hormone dependent cancers. The prize is awarded by the BMCS biennially in recognition of recently published outstanding biological or medicinal chemistry research.

 

Future Activities:

The BMCS is very active in organising an extensive range of conferences on a variety of relevant topics, and meetings that are currently scheduled by the committee include the following events:

Chemical Biology for Drug Discovery
Oxford University, Medical Sciences Training Centre, United Kingdom
08 December 2009 - 09 December 2009

3rd Biological and Medicinal Chemistry Symposium for Postgraduates
University of Cambridge, Wolfson Lecture Theatre, Chemistry Department, Cambridge, United Kingdom
11 December 2009 10:00 18:00

21st Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry
University of Hertfordshire, Fielder Centre, Hatfield, United Kingdom
29 April 2010 09:30 17:00

3rd RSC-SCI GPCRs in Medicinal Chemistry
Schering-Plough, Oss, Netherlands
20 September 2010 - 22 September 2010

Further details of these and other events are available at: link

 

 

The 14th Hellenic Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry

The Hellenic Society of Medicinal Chemistry in co-operation with the Division of Organic and Medicinal Chemistry of the Association of Greek Chemists organize the 14th Hellenic Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry in Thessaloniki, Greece in April 23-25, 2010.

HSMC-14 continues the tradition of biannual meetings established since more than 25 years in Greece as a forum for the discussion of recent advances in the field of Medicinal Chemistry. The topics of the Symposium include drug design and lead identification and optimization, covering all therapeutic areas, as well as the impact of ADME/Tox properties in drug discovery. Organic Synthesis, Biochemistry and Chemical Biology, Pharmacology, Computational Chemistry and Cheminformatics are integrated to create the environment for fruitful interchange of ideas between scientists involved in Medicinal Chemistry related areas.

The official language of the Symposium is English.

Thessaloniki, the capital of North Greece, is a fascinating city and cultural center, steeped in the Byzantine Era, where you can at the same time enjoy modern life style activities. The Symposium venue is located in the heart of Thessaloniki and easily accessible, offering to the participants the possibility to visit the most important historical sites.
More details about HSMC-14 can be found in the Symposium website at: www.helmedchem2010.gr

 

18th Symposium on Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships

The Hellenic Society on Medicinal Chemistry in co-operation with the International Cheminformatics and QSAR Society organize the 18th European Symposium on Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships in Rhodes, Greece, in September 19-24, 2010.

The European Symposia in QSAR have been taking place since 1973 and constitute major scientific events in the field of rational drug design and discovery, with further applications in agricultural or environmental chemistry. The EuroQSAR2010 symposium, entitled "Discovery Informatics and Drug Design" is an EFMC sponsored event and will focus on the latest scientific and technological developments in QSAR and cheminformatics, continuing the tradition of holding biannual symposia at different European countries.

The island of Rhodes (Rhodos in Greek) is renowned for its rich history, breathtaking beauty, vibrant social life and distinct culture, and offers excellent facilities for international events. It is the third largest Greek island, situated in the Southeast Aegean in the Mediterranean Sea at the crossroads of two continents.

Τhe Symposium will offer a high quality scientific program and it is expected to attract more than 400 participants from Europe and overseas from both academic and industry environment.

The Symposium topics include:

• Pharmacophore Searching and Virtual Screening
• Structure-Based Drug Design – Drugability
• Bioinformatics / Chemoinformatics
• Systems Biology and Biological Complexity
• Multi-target QSAR
• QSPR for Novel Biomaterials and Regenerative Medicine
• In Silico PhysChem Profiling and ADMET
• Predicting Drug Safety
• Predictive Toxicology and Risk Assessment -Environmental QSAR
• Computational Strategies in Agricultural Research
• Novel QSAR Approach

 

The Division of Medicinal Chemistry organized its own scientific session at the Fall Meeting of the Swiss Chemical Society in Lausanne (September 04). Scientists from universities and from industry presented 15 short communications and 34 posters. The Mettler-Toledo Prize for the „Best Oral Presentation“ was awarded to Silvia Anthoine Dietrich from the ETH Zürich for her talk entitled "Total Synthesis of New Functionalized Epothilone Analogs for Prodrug Design and Tumor Targeting”. The SCS-DSM Nutritional Products Poster Prize was given to Liliana Sintra Grilo from the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Geneva, for her contribution "Stereoselective block of hERG1 channel by bupivacaine scrutinized at molecular level".

 

Activities planned in 2010:

May 27, 2010: Mini-Symposium on ‘Channels and Transporters’ at the Department of Chemistry, University of Basel, comprising overview lectures by Beat Ernst (“Introduction and Basics of Channels and Transporters”), Raimund Dutzler (“The Structural Basis for Ion Conduction and Gating in Pentameric Ligand-Gated Ion Channels”) and Dietrich Keppler (“Uptake and Efflux Transporters for Endogenous Substances and for Drugs”), and two specific case studies, namely “Avosentan” (Werner Neidhart, Roche Basel) and another one from ICAGEN (title and speaker still open). No registration is necessary, free entrance is offered to all participants.

September 16, 2010: Division of Medicinal Chemistry, oral and poster session at the Fall Meeting of the Swiss Chemical Society, ETH Zürich.

September 21-24, 2010: The Swiss Chemical Society will organize the ILMAC Scientific Forum at the MCH Basel entitled “From Nylon to Nanomaterials. Future Trends in Polymers”, with a specific section on September 23 dedicated to Biopolymers and Polymer Based Drug Delivery. The program will include a lecture by Prof. Alberto A. Gabizon (Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel): “Delivery of Anticancer Agents by Liposomes: Nanomedicine in Action”.

October 10-15, 2010: 9th Swiss Course on Medicinal Chemistry, organized by Professor Beat Ernst in Leysin, a pittoresque Swiss mountain village. This course is held every second year. It offers young scientists with a few years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry and interested Ph.D. students a broad overview of key disciplines important for modern preclinical drug research. Active participation in tutorials and a broad variety of lectures and case histories are important elements of the course (see also www.swiss-chem-soc.ch/events/).

 

Seminar Program Winter Semester 2009/2010

November 11, 2009, 9:30 a.m., University of Vienna,
IX. Althanstrasse 14, HS 4
Prof. Dr. Gerhard Ecker, University of Vienna
Pharmacoinformatics – current trends, future challenges

November 18, 2009, 9:30 a.m., University of Vienna,
IX. Althanstrasse 14, HS 4
Prof. Dr. Peter Wolschann, University of Vienna
Molecular Calculations – from Force fields to Density Functional and ab initio Methods

Zovember 23, 2009, 5 p.m., Innsbruck University,
Innrain 52a, Großer HS / Chem. Institute
Dr. Norbert Bischofberger, Gilead Sciences, USA
Science Conquers Infectious Disease: The Advancement of Drugs against HIV and Influenza

November 26, 2009, 4 p.m., Vienna University of Technology,
VI. Getreidemarkt 9, Chemie-HS
Dr. Marko Susnik, Austrian Chamber of Commerce
REACH – Chemical Legislation on Change

Subsequent General Assembly of the Division

December 3, 2009, 4 p.m., Vienna University of Technology,
VI. Getreidemarkt 9, Chemie-HS
Dr. Peter Pöchlauer, DSM Linz
New Strategies Towards the Total Syntheses of Architecturally Complex Alkaloids

January 11, 2010, 5 p.m., Innsbruck University,
Innrain 52a, Großer HS / Chem. Institute
Prof. Dr. Andreas Marx, University of Konstanz
Caught in the act: DNA polymerases encountering aberrant substrates

January 14, 2010, 4 p.m., Vienna University of Technology,
VI. Getreidemarkt 9, Chemie-HS
Prof. Vladimir Kren, Adacemy of Sciences, Czech Republic
Biocatalytic modifications and discrimination of flavonoids: Chiral problems of silybin

 

1st Turkish-Russian Joint meeting on Organic and Medicinal Chemistry was held in Antalya, Turkey on 14-17 October 2009 which was organized by the Turkish Association of Pharmaceutical and Medicinal Chemistry in collaboration with the D.I.Mendeleev Russian Chemical Society (Section of Medicinal Chemistry).

International Postgraduate Student Meeting on Pharmaceutical Sciences (IPSMPS2010)
June 24-27, 2010, Çesme, İzmir, Turkey (www.ipsmps2010.org)

IPSMPS will be organized to achieve an international scientific platform for postgraduate students and junior scientists to meet and experience the advancements and the future expectations on the most relevant issues of pharmaceutical sciences via the plenary lectures given by the distinguished scientists. Meantime, the participants will find opportunity to share their researches by oral or poster presentations.

The Organizing Committee cordially invites you to attend the XXIst International Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry (ISMC 2010) that will be held in Brussels on September 5 - 9, 2010. It will be organized jointly by the Medicinal Chemistry Divisions of the ‘Société Royale de Chimie (SRC)’ and the ‘Koninklijke Vlaamse Chemische Vereniging (KVCV)’, on behalf of the European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry (EFMC).

 

21st International Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry
EFMC-ISMC 2010

Brussels, Belgium, September 5-9, 2010

ISMC 2010 will continue the tradition established by these biennial International Symposia and will cover drug discovery advances in all major therapeutic areas, as well as the most recent advances in lead identification and optimization strategies, in drug design and development, and in prediction of activity as well as of adverse effects. An emphasis will be on first time disclosures, emerging drugs and emerging technologies, including nanotechnologies and the chemical modulation of stem cells. ISMC 2010 will also illustrate the impact of the omics and biomarker areas on the interfaces between chemistry, informatics, biology and experimental medicine.
 
The Congress venue, ‘SQUARE’, Brussels’ fully renovated conference center which reopened in September 2009, offers state of the art facilities for speakers, exhibitors and attendants, as well as convenient access to all major hotels of the city center. ‘SQUARE’ is situated in the historic heart of Brussels, in between the world famous Grand Place and Le Sablon, well known for its antique shops and cozy terraces.

Registration is now open and can be done via the online registration tool on the symposium website www.ismc2010.org

We look forward to your active participation!

Edmond Differding
Koen Augustyns
Symposium Co-Chairmen