Dear Colleagues,
The year 2011 will be remembered as the year of the crisis, a crisis which has impacted many European countries and many economical assets, not excluding pharmaceutical companies and academic research. Crisis may also mean opportunity, and when resources are getting down, new ideas and new models should be proposed to face difficulties with a spirit of innovation. The Perspective article of this issue, by Micheal Barnes, deals with these issues, focusing on the innovative capacity of the drug discovery process, particularly including chemistry, by increasing partnership and data sharing based on the principles of open innovation.
Last summer has seen the 4th edition of ASMC, held in St. Petersburg. A scientific report on this always exciting symposium is presented by Erden Banoglu.
MedChemWatch continues to present to the medicinal chemistry community the leading European labs and the most active SMEs, and this is the turn of Prestwick Chemical, Strasbourg-Illkirch, France, created in 1990 by Camille Wermuth. In addition, the laboratory of Christian Heinis, winner of the 2011 EFMC prize for young researcher in Academia, is presented.
As usual, you will find the columns on news from member societies and from the EC of the EFMC. Indeed, among the various and interesting events that will take place the forthcoming year 2012 (and you will find the updated list in the ‘EFMC events’ section, as well as in the Meeting Calendar section of www.efmc.info), the hottest one will be the 22nd ISMC, which will be held in Berlin, September, 2-6, 2012.
Gabriele Costantino
Editor
