Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology in Drug Discovery: The Pharma Perspective

The Spanish Society of Medicinal Chemistry (SEQT), member of the European Federation of Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology (EFMC), and GalChimia held the VIII SEQT Summer School “Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology in Drug Discovery: The Pharma Perspective” in June 19-21, 2023 in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. This is the second edition of this SEQT Summer event as an EFMC Certified School, which has contributed to its internationalization, with participants coming from Portugal, United Kingdom, Italy, Brazil and Spain.

The meeting provided a forum for scientific discussions with the aim of approaching the pharma industry to young researchers, both graduate students and post-doctoral associates, working in the chemistry and health sciences related fields. For three days, the participants had the opportunity to learn about the latest research trends in pharmaceutical drug discovery and development.

The scientific program included several workshops covered by speakers from top pharmaceutical companies (Almirall, Janssen, Lilly, and Novartis), as well as a start-up biotech (Anavo Therapeutics), a leading CRO (GalChimia), an Open Innovation initiative (Kaertor Foundation), and the pioneers on the current hot topic of Targeted Protein Degradation (CeTPD, Univ. Dundee). The programme was completed with flash presentations, a poster session and 5 selected oral communications by the participants.

Scientific Programme

Workshop 1: What Medicinal Chemists need to know to degrade a target protein (…and why should we try?). William Farnaby (CeTPD, University of Dundee).

Workshop 2: Modern Medicinal Chemistry: the lamppost effect and premature conclusions. Gerhard Müller (Anavo Therapeutics)

Workshop 3: Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology for drug candidate identification. Yves Auberson (EFMC delegate; Novartis)

Workshop 4: New technologies in Organic Chemistry and their application to Medicinal Chemistry. José Enrique Gómez Pulido (Janssen)

Workshop 5: Scale-up in Drug Discovery: from a Route to a Process. Jacobo Cruces and Mónica Carreira (GalChimia)

Workshop 6: ADME properties and designing by purpose. Jordi Bach (Almirall)

Workshop 7: Discovery and use of novel photoredox reactions to transform Medicinal Chemistry. Juan A. Rincón (Lilly)

Workshop 8: Cancer Innova: a Business Factory Medicines initiative. Mabel Loza (Kaertor Foundation)

The three days flew by fueled by lively conversations shared over great Galician food! We were delighted to welcome everybody in our Headquarters in Touro, where the participants had the chance to meet our team, see our labs and discover our Passion for Chemistry!

From GalChimia, we would like to thank all the speakers for their insigthful talks and the participants for being so involved in the workshops, we had an amazing programme that will inspire the next generation of drug discovery professionals.

Co-organizing this Summer School with the SEQT has been a fantastic experience for us. A big thanks to their Board for reaching us to do this together, in particular Beatriz de Pascual-Teresa, Marta Gutierrez and Eva-María Priego, you are a great team! Our recognition also to the school sponsors, we couldn’t have done it without their support.

Links of interest