St. Anton, Austria January 19-23, 2020
This First Alpine Medchem conference was a wonderful opportunity to be immersed in cutting edge medicinal chemistry and chemical biology. The organisers assembled speakers from both industry and academia that attracted participants from across Europe and further afield. For those of us who had this opportunity to enjoy the science and also fully engage in the extracurricular opportunities provided by the ski slopes at this beautiful location of St Anton, it was a truly fantastic, if exhausting, conference.
While this was the very first edition of this conference, it felt as if it had been run for years. The logistics were perfect and the scientific program was superb. It included all the most relevant topics for contemporary medicinal chemistry ranging from hit finding strategies and new therapeutic modalities to chemical biology approaches and lead optimization case studies. Not many conferences offer such a deep program while maintaining a reasonably-sized audience, which greatly fosters networking. The grandiose location is the icing on the cake!