The Medicinal Chemistry Divisions of the two Belgian Chemical Societies, "Société Royale de Chimie (SRC)" and "Koninklijke Vlaamse Chemische Vereniging (KVCV)" are organising every year an international one-day symposium, with the aim to give an update on selected areas of pharmaceutical research by specialists in their respective field.

In recent years, this symposium has been focussing on topics such as “Emerging Targets and Treatments: Opportunities and Challenges for Drug Design” (2011); “Does size matter? Beyond small molecule therapeutics: challenges and success stories“ (2009); “Small molecules, Antibodies and Natural Products: Multiple Faces of Medicinal Chemistry” (2008); “New Drugs and Drug Candidates: Recent Achievements in Medicinal Chemistry (2007)”; or "Personalized Medicine: New Opportunities for Drug Discovery (2006)"; and has been gathering every year around 170 to 200 participants, half from universities, half from industry, both from Belgium and surrounding countries.

MedChem 2012, with six invited lectures and three oral communications, will be held on Friday November 30, 2012, at the Château de Colonster in Liège and will be chaired by Prof. Ad Ijzerman (LACDR, The Netherlands). The title and focus of the symposium will be “From Rapid Dissociation to Irreversible Inhibition – Optimisation of Drug-Target Residence Time”.

The objective of this one-day symposium is to address the highly challenging concept of drug target residence time, the optimisation of binding kinetics in the earliest phases of Drug Discovery, and the resurgence of covalent drugs.

MedChem 2012 is a EFMC Sponsored Event: