Medicinal inorganic chemistry continues to be a field with tremendous potential given the growth in the development of new metal-based drugs for therapy, imaging, and other applications. The 2014 """"""""Metals in Medicine"""""""" Gordon Research Conference (GRC) will bring together more than 125 PhD scientists and clinicians from academia, industry, and government to discuss the latest developments in the field in the relaxed collegial environment characteristic of a GRC. These attendees will include many students, postdoctoral fellows and early-career investigators whose attendance will be facilitated by offering reimbursements for their conference registration and travel expenses. The organizers of the 2014 """"""""Metals in Medicine"""""""" GRC have four Specific Aims: 1) To illustrate and discuss the successes of recently approved metal-based drugs;2) To explore research opportunities in important health-related disorders;3) To encourage future generations of young scientists to become involved with the interdisciplinary research opportunities offered in the fiel of medicinal inorganic chemistry;and 4) To provide a nucleating forum for researchers in medicinal inorganic chemistry, facilitating new research opportunities and new collaborations.
Aims 1 and 2 will be accomplished through the traditional GRC scientific sessions, which will feature leaders in the field, including outstanding younger scientists whenever possible. Examples of the technical areas that will be discussed at the 2014 """"""""Metals in Medicine"""""""" GRC include: (a) non-canonical DNA recognition by metal complexes;(b) the use of metals such as gadolinium and gold in MRI and CT contrast agents;(c) applications of inorganic nanoparticles in medicine;and (d) the pharmacology of metal-based drugs.
Aim 3 will be accomplished in two ways. First, the work of six graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, selected from among the posters presented at the conference, will be featured in two oral poster sessions where senior investigators as well as their peers will offer guidance and feedback. Second, the work of three early-career investigators, selected from the submitted abstracts, will be featured in the Thursday evening """"""""New Frontiers"""""""" session.
Aim 4 will be accomplished by bringing together the most prominent researchers in the field from academics, industry, and government labs around the world as well as a large number of extremely promising younger scientists in a relaxed collegial environment that provides fertile ground for the free exchange of ideas as well as multiple opportunities to develop new collaborations.
The importance of metals in medicinal chemistry cannot be understated because: 1) of the success of metal- based therapeutics such as cisplatin and its successors;2) of the increasing realization that many diseases are the result of dysregulation of metal-essential biological processes;and 3) metal-based drugs play an essential role in nuclear medicine (e.g., 99mTc, 90Y) and MRI (e.g. Gd). The 2014 Metals in Medicine Gordon Research Conference (GRC) will bring together PhD scientists and clinicians from academia, industry and government to discuss the latest developments in these diverse aspects of medicinal inorganic chemistry. In addition, an important goal of this conference is to attract as many outstanding students, postdoctoral fellows and young investigators as possible by offering partial conference support and by bringing attention to selected young investigators through oral poster presentations and the New Frontiers session on Thursday evening.
