The Chemical Biology-Medicinal Chemistry Continuum: EFMC's Vision.

The European Federation for Medicinal chemistry and Chemical biology (EFMC) is a federation of learned societies. It groups organizations of European scientists working in a dynamic field spanning chemical biology and medicinal chemistry. New ideas, tools, and technologies emerging from a wide array of scientific disciplines continuously energize this rapidly evolving area. Medicinal chemistry is the design, synthesis, and optimization of biologically active molecules aimed at discovering new drug candidates - a mission that in many ways overlaps with the scope of chemical biology. Chemical biology is by now a mature field of science for which a more precise definition of what it encompasses, in the frame of EFMC, is timely. This article discusses chemical biology as currently understood by EFMC, including all activities dealing with the design and synthesis of biologically active chemical tools and their use to probe, characterize, or influence biological systems.