19th International Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry.

In late August, hundreds of chemists gathered on the eastern edge of Europe, some sipping raki while looking over the Bosporus Strait to the Asian continent. More than 900 people attended the 19th International Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry in Istanbul from August 29 to September 2, 2006, hosted by the European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry (EFMC) and the Turkish Association of Pharmaceutical and Medicinal Chemistry. The motto for the conference, held for the first time in Turkey, was "where continents meet". It could easily have been "where disciplines meet". Roberto Pellicciari, head of the EFMC, observed an "unbelievable shift" in the kinds of topics that interest medicinal chemists. "There's been a completely new understanding for medicinal chemistry coming from chemical biology."