Polish drug design

The Second International Conference on Crystallography and Drug Design (CDD'99), an interdisciplinary meeting for scientists engaged in structural chemistry, modelling, intermolecular interactions and drug design, was held in May 1999 in Poland. Most lectures were presented by crystallographers to an audience of medicinal chemists. In Poland, Medicinal Academies are separate from Universities and their chemistry oriented departments are engaged mostly in new drug synthesis. With advances in computer aided drug design, the need for structural data has become more apparent, providing crystallographers with new opportunities for interdisciplinary work.

Among the speakers at the Second Conference on drug design, organized by the staff of the Technical U. of Lódz , were G. Desiraju, W.L. Duax, P. Murray-Rust, A. Kalman and S. Price. The Third Conference is planned in conjunction with ECM in Cracow (2001).

After the Conference, Bill Duax received a degree of honoris causa doctor from Technical U. of Lódz. The fruitful collaboration between Duax and crystallographers of the Technical U. of Lódz led by Prof. Galdecki begun 20 years ago has resulted in 31 joint publications.

Marek Glowka