Singapore, Feb 01, 2010: The Royal Society of Chemistry, in collaboration with A*STAR’s Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences (ICES) and GlaxoSmithKline R&D, Singapore (GSK), and with support from the British High Commission Singapore organized a symposium on “Medicinal Chemistry” during last week of January 2010 to discuss current progress and challenges within the field of medicinal chemistry. The objective of the symposium was to bring together researchers from the United Kingdom and the South East Asia region

 
The two-day symposium was held under the auspices of the “UK-Singapore Partners in Science” Programme and it included lectures by experts from the pharmaceutical industry such as the Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases, S*BIO, Pfizer, AMRI, Astex Therapeutics, Forma Therapeutics, Cancer Research Technology, AstraZeneca and GSK, and the leading academic and research centres like Dundee University, Liverpool University, University of St Andrews, National University of Singapore and ICES.

 

The speakers covered various topics, for example the treatment of cancer, obesity, malaria and inflammatory pain, and the application of techniques such as diversity-orientated synthesis, fragment based drug discovery and the use of biophysical techniques in medicinal chemistry.

 

Medicinal chemistry lies at the very heart of the drug discovery process. The symposium was aimed at researchers in industry and academia, including graduate students and to provide participants with an excellent opportunity to meet and network with potential collaborators. Participants will also have opportunities to discuss new strategies in drug discovery and to highligh the cutting edge research in the field.

 

Mr Paul Madden, British High Commissioner to Singapore, said, “This symposium is a good opportunity for those who have an interest in medicinal chemistry to come together to share knowledge and to benefit from each other’s experience. It provides a platform for UK and Singaporean researchers to develop collaborations and build up scientific capacity in South East Asia.”