1) Professor Pellicciari, what is the impact of EFMC on European research?
EFMC represents 21 adhering organisations belonging to 19 countries and more than 7,500 individual scientists, covering a geographical area similar in size to that of USA. EFMC has the very ambitious objective of advancing medicinal chemistry in Europe, by promoting cooperation and encouraging strong links between the national adhering organisations, in order to establish contacts and exchanges between medicinal chemists in Europe and around the World.
There are many instruments by which EFMC aims at fulfilling these objectives. The most important one is the organization, biannually, of the International Symposium of Medicinal Chemistry (ISMC). ISMC meetings have been held in many different European countries since 1970: Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Sweden, The Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and UK. These symposia, with an average attendance of about 1,000 delegates, have broad international attendance with speakers and participants representing more than 40 countries.
Schools also represent an important instrument to strengthen the link between European scientists and to promote different models of high scientific education. There are three very successful Medicinal Chemistry Schools, sponsored by EFMC, which are hold annually in Leiden (The Netherlands), Leysin (Switzerland), and Urbino (Italy).
EFMC recognizes the excellence of medicinal chemist’s work by conferring, every two years, three important Awards:
- the Prous Award,
- the Nauta Award
- and the UCB Award.
Furthermore, during the ISMC2006 (Istanbul), other two important Awards were presented
- the GSK Award for Chemical Biology
- and the IUPAC-Richter Prize for Medicinal Chemistry.
EFMC is also heavily involved in collaborations with other national organizations, the Medicinal Chemistry Division of the ACS, in particular, and with other trans-national organizations representing different faces of drug discovery research.
Finally, EFMC is committed in the information exchange among adhering organizations and individual members. Thus, the EFMC yearbook is published annually aiming at providing national organizations and corporate members the opportunity to dispatch their dynamic profile and image amongst medicinal chemists. The web site (www.efmc.info) contains all the relevant information concerning EFMC organization and activities, as well as links to events and news related to medicinal chemistry.
Last but certainly not the least, the present newsletter has the ambitious aim to become an established forum where members may find useful information and exchange ideas and views.
2) What are the main challenges for EFMC?
The biggest problem and, at the same time, the biggest challenge is to manage our increasing expansion.
This has to be handled from a cultural, political and organization point of view. As the most representative medicinal chemistry organization, EFMC has the aim to advise and to have a substantial impact on the scientific community as well as on the European Commission on developments in medicinal chemistry.
For instance, EFMC is committed to the establishment of permanent links with the European Commission to help the funding of medicinal chemistry research. In this connection, the first FP7 calls are just out and, apparently, there is not too much for medicinal chemistry.
On one side, this indicates that perhaps the medicinal chemistry community has to re-think about the instruments and the cultural tools that have to be used to accomplish its mission.
On the other side, it indicates the strong need of a concerted action in order to allocate resources for supporting all the application of chemistry in biological and bio-medical sciences.
Other challenges are beyond us in the close future. For example, an important point in our agenda is the EFMC expansion in terms of national societies memberships. We also wish to increase the support to the participation of young students and researchers to our events by providing additional fellowships.
Finally, an important task will be helping national societies in working together through dissemination of information and increasing the exchange between national societies, also by taking decisions on important issues, when necessary.
3) In order to accomplish these complex and stimulating challenges, Do you foresee any changes and improvements in the current EFMC organisation?
To manage the increasing complexity of the tasks in which EFMC is involved, from symposium organization to relationship with other organizations or with corporate members, requires a professional organization.
Last year, the Council of EFMC has approved the constitution of four committees, which are intended to support the President and the Executive Committee and to operatively implement EFMC’s actions.
Furthermore, a professional organization requires professionals. EFMC has contracts with service societies, such LD Organization and Pupilla Grafik.
4) What are the current EFMC partnerships with other international organisations?
EFMC is highly committed to establish and promote stable relationship with other international organizations.
EFMC has a special link with the Medicinal Chemistry Division of the ACS. EFMC has a permanent representative on the Long Range Planning Committee of the ACS Medicinal Chemistry Division and EFMC hosts a permanent representative from ACS-MC who attends its Council meetings. A special event that resulted from this collaboration is the first ACS-EFMC joint meeting on ‘Frontiers in CNS and Oncology Medicinal Chemistry’ which will be held in Siena (Italy), October 7-9, 2007. Furthermore, the ACS convenes sessions for the biennial ISMC Symposia, and conversely the EFMC convenes sessions for ACS National meetings.
Strong links are also established with the Asian Federation of Medicinal Chemistry; EFMC sessions are organized in AFMC meetings and vice versa. Finally, there is a strong need to improve the relationship with international organizations that represent the diverse aspects of drug discovery.
The first steps in this direction are already taken, and the ‘European Pharma Sciences Leadership Forum’ has been created, composed by the Presidents of the following European Federations and Associations:
- EUFEPS (the European Federation for Pharmaceutical Sciences);
- EACPT (the European Association of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics);
- EAPB (the European Association of Pharma Biotechnology);
- ECRIN (the European Clinical Research Infrastructures Network);
- EFB (the European Federation of Biotechnology);
- EFMC (the European Federation of Medicinal Chemistry);
- EPHAR (the Federation of European Pharmacological Societies);
- ESCP (the European Society of Clinical Pharmacy);
- EUROTOX (the European Federation of Toxicologists & European Societies of Toxicology);
- FEBS (the Federation of European Biochemical Societies);
- and GA (the Society for Medicinal Plant Research).
This initiative is intended to agree on mutually convenient and common initiative to support, at the highest levels, the research in medicinal, pharmaceutical and bio-chemical research.
By Gabriele Costantino
