MEETING REPORT

With the sponsoring of EFMC, St. Petersburg (Russia) has hosted the 20th edition of the EuroQSAR meeting, organized by Prof. Vladimir Prokoirov (MSU). Organized biannually in a European city, the meeting was originally thought to be the main scientific event of the QSAR and Molecular Modeling Society, which has now ceased his operation. Despite this, the meeting continues to be place where scientists from all around the world meet to discuss the most recent advances in the development and application of computational and informatics techniques to disciplines such as drug discovery, material chemistry, agriculture and agrochemicals. Despite the broad scope of the conference, there is no doubt that also in St. Petersburg the most popular field of application was drug discovery. Indeed, QSAR methods as well as ligand and structure based molecular modeling techniques are continuously perceived as accelerators in the drug discovery pipeline. More than 260 participants and several exhibitors have enjoyed the conference which started on Sunday 31st.
The opening lecture was delivered by Prof. Fujita (Kyoto University, Japan), who is universally recognized as the founding father of the QSAR together with Corvin Hansch. And in fact his lecture was an inspiring wandering into fifty years of science which have contributed to shape not only the QSAR but also most of the way in which structure-activity relationship are perceived by medicinal chemistry. The scientific program has then evolved along thematic scientific session, from structure based drug design to chemoinformatics. The Meeting was also the occasion to assign the Corvin Hansch Award. The award, established in 2000, is named after the late honorary chair of the Society and the pioneer of the interdisciplinary science of QSAR, Dr. Corwin Hansch. The 2014’s recipient was Dr. Andreas Bender, Lecturer for Molecular Informatics with the Centre for Molecular Informatics at the University of Cambridge. The next edition of the EuroQSAR meeting in 2016 will be hosted by Italy and will be held in Verona, chaired by Gabriele Costantino and Andrea Cavalli.

It must be finally observed that the Meeting has been held under the patronage of the 2014 EU-Russia Year of Science, an initiative which is especially important to mention in these days where we see not easy political relationships which, nevertheless, do not obstacle friendly and productive scientific contacts.