Integrative data-intensive research for better drug design

The 23rd EuroQSAR Symposium in Heidelberg, Germany will focus on “Integrative Data-Intensive Approaches to Drug Design” and be attended by about 300 participants from academia and industry. The conference will take place from 26 to 30 September at Heidelberg University and is chaired by HITS group leader Rebecca Wade.

The EuroQSAR symposia have been taking place at different locations in Europe at roughly 2-year intervals since 1973 to promote, disseminate and discuss advances in drug design by computer-aided methods. They constitute major scientific events in the field of computational drug design, with further applications in agricultural and environmental sciences. “After postponement due to the Coronavirus pandemic, we are happy to host the 23rd EuroQSAR as a face-to-face meeting in Heidelberg”, says Rebecca Wade, group leader at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) and professor at Heidelberg University, who chairs the symposium. “We expect around 300 participants from academia and industry.” The overarching theme of the meeting will be “Integrative Data-Intensive Approaches to Drug Design”. 

The symposium is organized on behalf of QCMS – the QSAR, chemoinformatics and modeling society (https://www.qsar.org/). QCMS is an international society open to scientists involved in Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships (QSAR), cheminformatics, and modeling for medicinal, agricultural, or environmental chemistry. The symposium will include 12 plenary lectures, 16 session lectures, 11 oral communications, several workshops, poster presentations and a commercial exhibition. It will tackle topics like artificial intelligence in drug design, modeling drug safety, network medicine or pharmacological issues.  

Part of the program will be the presentation of the Corwin Hansch and Toshio Fujita Awards 2020& 2022, named after two pioneers in the QSAR field. These awards are given to younger investigators (HanschAward) and more senior investigators (FujitaAward) as recognition in the field of cheminformatics and Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships (QSAR) research.  For more information about the awardees see below.

The event is supported by the DFG (German Research Foundation), HITS, and Heidelberg University, is an EFMC (European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology) sponsored event, and is sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing (IWR) at Heidelberg University, Novartis, and other institutions, companies and publishers.

More information on the program: https://www.euroqsar2022.org/programme

Journalists are welcome to participate on Monday September 26 for the opening session as from 16:30 and the welcome drink at 18:15, or the 2022 award session on Friday September 30 at 11:00. To register, please contact: info@LDOrganisation.com

Scientific contact:
Prof. Dr. Rebecca Wade
Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies

Press contact:
Dr. Peter Saueressig
Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies

Information on the Corwin Hansch and Toshio Fujita Awards:

2020 awardees:

• Set-Theoretic Analysis of Ligand-Target Datasets – An Intuitionistic Fuzzy Set ApproachProf. Gerald M. MAGGIORA (UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA, Tucson, United States)
  Due to health issues preventing Prof. Maggiora to travel, Prof. Vogt will stand in for him.
• Multi-scaling the CRISPR-Cas Revolution from Gene Editing to Viral Detection
  Dr Giulia PALERMO (UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE, Riverside, United States)

2022 awardees:

• Fujita Award Lecture
  Consulting the Experiment: Are our Currently Applied Computational Drug-Design Tools Comprehensive Enough
  Prof. Gerhard KLEBE(Philipps-University Marburg, DE)
• Hansch Award Lecture
  Data-Driven Methods for Active Compound Design and Risk Assessment
  Prof. Andrea VOLKAMER(Saarland University, Saarbrücken, DE)