Section activities and priorities

The most important Section event is the organization of the annual Conference „ Synthesis and Analysis of Drugs“, which has been organized since 1966 as a bilateral Czech-Slovak event. The venues were alternatively held in the Czech and in the Slovak part of the country. The organizers of the events were Section members mostly from academia, i.e. Faculties of Pharmacy in Bratislava, Hradec Králové and later in Brno. Colleagues from the Section of Pharmaceutical Control and Bioanalytics also took part in its organization. The conference became an important meeting point for a number of experts from various faculties of pharmacy, as well as the Research Institute of Pharmacy and Biochemistry (VÚFB), also including prominents from the pharmaceutical industry engaged in research and development of synthetic drugs. The abstracts from the conference were published in separate Book of Abstracts or as supplements to journals (Czechoslovak Pharmacy, later Czech and Slovak Pharmacy, Farmaceutický obzor or Chemické listy).

Following the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, VÚFB was dissolved and due to economic changes in the Czech and Slovak industry the tradition of conference was maintained in continuous cooperation with the Slovak Pharmaceutical Society (Section of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Section of Pharmaceutical Analysis). The event has gradually transformed into an international conference, as participants were pharmaceutical chemists from Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Austria, or the Ukraine. During the extraordinary 45 years of the conferences, there were dozens of interesting lectures delivered on novel drugs by invited guests from the pharmaceutical research sector. Every year the participants had a wonderful opportunity to listen to various presentations and poster presentations regarding the most topical issues, research projects and latest results in the area of synthesis and analysis of pharmaceuticals. In the last decades, primarily students in postgraduate study programmes have been attending the presentations from the field of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Bioorganic and Inorganic Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Analysis and Healthcare Bioanalytics.

The Section members actively participate at international professional events and often actively contribute to their successful organization (http://www.faf.cuni.cz/Medchemeurophd/). An excellent example might be the symposium („Joint Meeting 2006“, 4.−7. 10. 2006) at the University of Marburg, held as one of the annual meetings of the German Pharmaceutical Society. With solely English as its working language, nearly 600 pharmacists attended the symposium from Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and many other countries. The participants in our Section were mostly representing the Faculty of Pharmacy, Charles University in Hradec Králové as well as the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry (IOCB) and Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Prague. The scientific programme included a plenary lecture by Prof. A. Holý from IOCB on the development of antiviral drugs. Since 2010, there has been a marked increase in our members’ participation in the activities of the Europe based Paul Ehrlich MedChem Euro Ph.D. network. On 20.−22. June 2014 the Fourth Scientific Conference „Paul Ehrlich MedChem Euro PhD network“ (http://www.pehrlichmedchem.eu/) took place at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Charles University in Hradec Králové. Similarly, themed conferences in pharmaceutical chemistry are organized by another European network, i.e. the Hungarian-Austrian-Czech-German-Greek-Italian-Polish-Slovak-Slovenian Joint Meeting on Medicinal Chemistry (http://www.jmmc2015.gr/). These events were held under the auspices of the European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry (EFMC, http://www.efmc.info/). Among the most prestigious conferences in the area of pharmaceutical chemistry, the EFMC International Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry took place in Manchester (28. 8.–1. 9. 2016).

The Section, cooperating with Faculties of Pharmacy, is promoting active participation in forms of lectures and poster presentations supporting mainly young researches. There were numerous Chairmen in the management of the Section of Synthetic Drugs of the CzPS: dr. ing. Oldřich Hanč, DrSc. (VÚFB), Prof. RNDr. PhMr. Karel Palát, CSc., Assoc. prof. RNDr. Jiří Hartl, CSc. and Prof. PharmDr. Alexandr Hrabálek, CSc. The Section Committee is currently working with a new set-up.