ACS Division of Chemical Toxicology

Newsletter

Editor, Richard Loeppky

Message from the Division Chair, F. Peter Guengerich

Guengerich The second quarter of 2008 has seen a lot of activity and the August National ACS meeting will be here soon (and the end of summer, believe it or not). I have divided this quarter's message with subheads to keep things organized.

National ACS Meeting in Philadelphia, 17-20 August. The meeting is coming up fast. Kent Gates, Program Chair, has organized an excellent program (see the article below). We have a few changes this year. The evening poster session will have a change in the food/serving style to make it more conducive to interacting with the poster presenters. The first Founders' Award symposium is organized by this year's winner, Larry Marnett<. Also, we are developing a system in which authors of posters (or even talks) can post these on our website for six weeks after the meetings (see details below). This is optional for authors, and a password will be needed so that access is restricted to Division members. The goals are to allow individuals who cannot attend the meeting to see some of the presentations and to allow those who attend to garner more details of interesting posters and talks. I know that many times attendees at meetings have asked me for my PowerPoint slides and I've had to send them separately.

Finally, I hope that you will attend the Division Business Meeting. It is only an hour long and we do want to keep you informed and have your input.

ACS ProSpectives Conference on Mechanisms of Chemically-Induced Toxicity, Philadelphia, 18-20 May . I organized this conference along with Jim MacDonald from Schering-Plough, as a follow-up to the one we had in Washington two years ago (Chem. Res. Toxicol. 20, 344-369, 2007). Although this is not a specific Division of Chemical Toxicology function, the conference highlighted the importance of toxicology and safety assessment in the pharmaceutical development. Pre-clinical and clinical toxicology is the main reason why drug candidates do not get to market and obviously is driving the high cost of drug development (about $1.5 billion now). Any success is helpful. New approaches are being tried, based on new information about genomes, pathways, etc. I personally feel that more interaction with scientists in the areas of medicinal chemistry, drug metabolism, and safety assessment is a high priority for this Division. Nick Meanwell, and I continue to program a joint Medicinal Chemistry/Chemical Toxicology (Division) symposium each year at the fall national ACS meeting. This year we will focus on enzyme induction and inhibition as they relate to drug toxicity.

Thanks go to Pete Dedon and Dan Liebler, who helped me put on what I thought was a very successful Short Course before the start of the conference. The funds normally given to instructors will go to our Division.

Division Short Course. A short course on mechanistic chemical toxicology is being offered at the Fall ACS national meeting in Philadelphia. This is going to be held on Wednesday 20 August (last day of meeting) and is focused on medicinal chemists who want to reduce bioactivation-related liabilities. See the article in the newletter to get more information and to register. Also, be sure to tell your friends in medicinal chemistry about this opportunity, particularly if they are going to the ACS meeting anyway. Funds normally given to instructors will go to the Division to help with our programming etc.

New web system. Tom Spratt is changing the web system, primarily to support some of our new activities, including electronic voting (see below) and our posting of presentations from the national meeting (see above).

Upcoming election. The Nominating Committee is entertaining suggestions for several available offices for next year. The slate of nominees will be presented first at the business meeting of the Division at the August national meeting. This year we plan to implement electronic voting with our new website (thanks to Secretary Tom Spratt), which should reduce our costs and effort.

Jobs list on website. When I checked, there were three ads on the site, including postdocs and industry positions. We could use more. If people will utilize this more, it will become more effective. Remember, this is free to members, whether you are looking to hire or be hired.

Chemical Research in Toxicology. This is the ACS journal associated with our Division. I hope you have all noticed the new features that began in both the web and the print versions this year. Please direct any comments or suggestions you have to Larry Marnett, Editor-in-Chief, or Carol Rouzer, our new Managing Editor, who is involved in this effort.

Also, see the announcement in this newsletter calling for papers (both original research and commentaries) on "MIST" issues (human-specific metabolism and relevance to toxicity) to be featured in the February 2009 issue. This "MIST" issue of Chem. Res. Toxicol. will be a "must" for all interested in pharmaceutical development, including scientists and regulators.

Continued input needed. As you can see, we have many things going on. I continue to seek your suggestions as to how we can make this a better Division and do things you are interested in. We still have financial limitations but have made progress in this area, with the work of our Finance Committee.

Believe it or not , I am ¾ of the way through my 2-year term now, but the Division will be in good hands with Lisa Peterson, our Chair-Elect, during the next two years (2009-2010). Lisa has been in the loop in much of the planning and decisions of the Division since January and will be very well-acquainted with the system before her term as Chair begins. Both of us will be glad to share any suggestions you have. Thanks.