GABRIELE COSTANTINO: Uli, the starting of a new presidency is a good occasion to take stock of the state of EFMC and of medicinal chemistry in general in Europe. What’s your vision for the next years?

ULI STILZ: Gabriele, let me first of all express that it is a special honor for me and makes me feel privileged to have been elected by the Council as President of the EFMC from 2012 to 2014. The year 2011 has been a year of continued economic crisis and of unprecedented change for many of our members in the pharmaceutical industry. Across the board R&D activities have been challenged in view of continuously rising R&D costs for each NCE or NBE being approved and pressures from business to maintain profitability in view of a significant patent cliff and cost pressures in global health care systems. At the same time we are experiencing remarkable scientific advances as a community moving us towards a better understanding of human disease biology. Overall I believe that we will need to take more risk in research to push for disruptive innovation over incremental improvements. Chemists will have to play a key role here to advance our molecular understanding of disease, to study complex systems, and to make sophisticated molecules. Medicinal Chemistry has always been an interdisciplinary field with the ability to make molecules – either small or large – at its core. We certainly need to foster the science of making and improving drug like molecules and we need to train young scientists in the art of doing so. At the same time I would like us, the chemical community, to be engaged in current and future frontiers including pathway biology and target selection, translational science and biomarker discovery, and disruptive drug targeting and delivery solutions All this will require new ways of working across various disciplines both in academia and industry. Activities of the EFMC in the coming years are intended to both foster the scientific excellence and training of our discipline in Europe and at the same time to facilitate collaborations across scientific disciplines including biology and medicine. I see the role of the EFMC in shaping this interdisciplinary research environment and in promoting Medicinal Chemistry across Europe using the large research network we already have. We can build hereby on the enthusiasm and scientific reputation of our scientific community and on the legacy and vision of EFMC’s past presidents Henk Timmerman, Ferran Sanz, Roberto Pellicciari, and Gerhard Ecker.

GC: Can you anticipate your main commitments as President of the EFMC? What will be the continuities with the former presidencies, and what the innovation you intend to bring up?

US: EFMC today is a very well organized learned society with a well established infrastructure supporting our activities. It is one of my commitments to seek an active dialog with the scientific and strategic committees of the EFMC to jointly shape our strategic vision and operational activities. It is also critical that we maintain our infrastructure and secure the required finances to do so. We certainly will continue to foster scientific networks across the globe. Our scientific meetings including EFMC-ISMC provide a wonderful platform for this. It is important for me that we also continue to invest into the future of young scientists by providing training opportunities including short courses and travel grants.
Looking into the future I would like EFMC leadership to actively engage in a dialogue with their members and to build opportunities for member scientists to network with each other. The social media provide us here with a unique opportunity and we will need to figure out how to best navigate in this space.
In addition, I would like us to be active participants in the European Biomedical Science community. It is important that we expand our networks further into the basic disease biology as well as the medical/clinical communities as I believe that innovation will be driven at these interfaces. Furthermore it is one of my and the EC’s priorities to leverage EFMC member’s knowledge to influence European science policies. We have been actively involved in the Innovative Medicine Initiative and I expect future initiatives to involve Medicinal Chemistry even more closely as an enabling science.

GC: EFMC gathers together more than 6,000 medicinal chemists from both academia and industry. European medicinal chemistry has the potential for being one of the world-leading drivers of the research in biochemical and health sciences. What are your personal and the EFMC’s commitments to create a real community of medicinal chemists in Europe, from both a cultural, political and economical point of view?

US: Today Medicinal Chemistry in Europe is well networked across the various member states.
The EFMC-ISMC is the World’s largest medicinal chemistry meeting, bringing together more than 1000 scientists every other year to discuss most scientific advances and new clinical candidates.
We also foster a significant number of national and international meetings and training events mentioned below in more detail. This emphasizes that we already have a dynamic and innovative scientific community driving biomedical innovation and drug discovery.
We are collaborating with other learned societies both in and outside Europe. I just would like to mention our participation in the European Pharma Leadership forum which gives us the opportunity to discuss and share our vision with other learned societies in Europe and to influence science policies in Europe. It goes without saying for all of us that novel medicines will be molecular entities but nevertheless we should not get tired to communicate that the ability to design and synthesize new molecules – small molecules or macromolecules – will be a critical enabler of any biomedical research enterprise.

GC: One of the missions of EFMC is to promote aggregation and cultural exchange between the members. Can you briefly summarize what are the main activities of EFMC, and which instruments can an European medicinal chemist use to get information about EFMC and its activities (besides this newsletter, of course)?

US: Scientific meetings will continue to be critical activities to bring the medicinal chemistry community together to learn about the newest science and to network amongst scientists. Our flagship event is the biannual EFMC-ISMC meeting which will be held in Berlin in 2012 and in Lisbon in 2014. In addition, we organize the ASMC together with Chembridge and the Frontiers in Medicinal Chemistry series together with ACS every other year. We also sponsor a significant number of scientific events of our member societies each year.
Education and Training is a cornerstone of the mission of EFMC and is provided to young scientists and industrial researchers through our summer schools and short courses.
Among them, I would like to highlight the Medicinal Chemistry Schools. Besides the accredited Summer School in Urbino (Italy) the EFMC sponsors additional 5 summer schools.
Short courses are intended for scientists working in the field, and the presentations are given by senior scientists from both industry and academia. The number of participants is limited to 35 to allow for in depth discussions.
The next course in 2012 (April 1-4) will be organized by Thomas Klabunde (Sanofi), Brian Harms (Merrimack), and Henk Timmerman (Amsterdam) and will be focused on the topic “Target selection through chemical and systems biology”. The Fall Short Course is scheduled for October 21-24, 2012. Topic will be “Improving Compound Quality: Physical Chemistry and DMPK Properties in Drug Discovery. Principles, Assays and Predictions” and the programme will be compiled by Kevin Beaumont (Pfizer).
Each year we publish our yearbook Medicinal Chemistry in Europe. In 2012 we have moved from the previous print version only to a mixed model with an electronic version complemented by printed versions on request to account for the growing number of our members preferring to use electronic media. Finally, we have MedChemWatch, the e-newsletter of EFMC, which is also incorporated into the paper version of MedChemComm, our monthly journal published by RSC containing a mix of vibrant and concise research and review articles Thinking about electronic media we have created an expert network within LinkedIn more recently. I believe that social media offer a significant opportunity to create a lively and interactive community and right now we are looking into various options on how to best navigate and on how to best involve our members to make this happen.
We also convene three major EFMC awards each second year, we established the EFMC Prize for a Young Medicinal Chemist in Industry and the EFMC Prize for a Young Medicinal Chemist in Academia and we have session exchange agreements with three major international learned societies.
If you would like to obtain up to date information on EFMC activities please register on our web page www.efmc.info.

GC: Thank you very much and good luck for your presidency! Would you like to conclude by addressing a short message to all the readers of this newsletter?

US: Yes, certainly. I would like to encourage you all to actively participate in the community and shape Medicinal Chemistry in Europe with your ideas and your enthusiasm. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me with your ideas, wishes, and concerns.

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Contact

Dr. Uli Stilz
Sanofi-Aventis Deutschland GmbH
Innovation & External Networking
Diabetes Division
Industriepark Höchst, G 838
65926 Frankfurt Germany
phone: +49 69 305-83294
mail: president@efmc.info

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Uli Stilz did his undergraduate training at the University of Freiburg and the ETH Zuerich culminating with a Master degree in Organic Chemistry. He then moved to the Max-Planck-Institute in Martinsried, where he received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1990. Subsequently, he undertook postdoctorial studies at the California Institute of Technology.

In 1992 he joined Hoechst AG in Frankfurt as Research Scientist working initially on cell adhesion inhibitors. In 1997 he was appointed Research Director in Medicinal Chemistry. As of 1999 he became responsible for Discovery Chemistry at the Frankfurt Research Site. Under his leadership, the team delivered multiple candidates now under clinical evaluation at various stages In 2007 he was appointed Associate Vice President in Chemical and Analytical Sciences with responsibility for research groups in France, Germany, and the United States. As of 2010 he has assumed responsibility for the innovation department within the Diabetes Division with a special emphasis on disease biology, regenerative medicine, systems biology/bioinformatics, diagnostics/biomarkers, and innovative devices.

He is president of the European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry and serves on various Editorial and Scientific Advisory Boards.