Editor, Richard Loeppky
In this Issue:
Message from the Chair, Prof. F. Peter 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 below and the link to get more information and 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 below 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.
Fred Guengerich, Chair
Division of Chemical Toxicology
Program at the ACS Meeting in Phladelphia
 Kent Gates has provided the following information regarding the program in Philadelphia, August 17-21. Because renovations are being made to the Philadelphia Convention Center, all TOXI meetings will be held in the Loews Hotel. This site is within two blocks of the Convention Center and close to the sites of the meetings of the Divisions of Biological Chemistry (Marriott Courtyard) and Medicinal Chemistry Convention Center). Programming will occur from Sunday until Wednesday afternoon.
- Sunday Morning
- Structural Biology of DNA Damage and Repair
M. P. Stone, Organizer
- Sunday Afternoon
- Founders Award Symposium
K. S. Gates and L. J. Marnett, Organizers
- Monday Morning
- General Papers: Young Investigator Session
K. S. Gates, Organizer
- Monday Afternoon
- Chemical Biology of Epigenetics
N. Tretyakova and L. Sowers, Organizers
- Monday Lunch
- Division Buisness Meeting
- Monday Evening
- Division of Chemical Toxicology Sci-Mix Symposium
K. S. Gates, Organizer
- Tuesday Morning
- Drug Safety
N. A. Meanwell and F. P. Guengerich, Organizers
- Tuesday Afternoon
- Cytochrome P450 Structure, Function, and Mechanism
F. P. Guengerich Organizer
- Tuesday Evening
- General Posters
K. S. Gates, Organizer
- Wednesday Morning
- Environmental and Human Health Impacts of Nanomaterials
A. B. Kane and R. Hurt, Organizers
- Wednesday Afternoon
- General Papers
K. S. Gates, Organizer
Kent Gates, Chair Program Committee
Division of Chemical toxicology, Founder's Award
 The Division of Chemical Toxicology is pleased to announce awarding of the first annual Founder's Award to Dr. Larry Marnett, Prof. of Chemistry, Biochemistry, and Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University. The award recognizes Dr. Marnett's achievements in the field of chemical toxicology, a field in which he has been a pioneer and unifying force. The award is given to a TOXI member whose scientific activities have emphasized innovative research in the general field of chemical toxicology. The award was established by the Division to honor the vision and contributions of individuals who worked to get to the division started in the mid-1990s.
Electronic Posting of Posters and Talks
on the Division of Chemical Toxicology Website.
As a service to TOXI members and non-members who will be presenting posters and talks at the ACS National meeting in the Division of Chemical Toxicology, TOXI is pleased to announce a web-based tool for posting presentations on-line.
The following guidelines will be adhered to.
- Presenters will have the option to post their poster/talk content online directly after the end of the meeting.
- The poster/talk should be sent as single pdf document to the web-site and identified by abstract number.
- The posting phase will be available for up to 7 days after the meeting.
- Presenters have the responsibility of checking with journals about any potential copyright issues. This could be especially true if you plan to refer to data either published or in press.
- Individuals will have access to the posted posters/talks for up to 6 weeks after the posting deadline. At the end of the read-phase all content will be removed from the web-site.
- TOXI Division members will have free access to the posters as a member benefit and access will be password protected. A password can be obtained following the prompts on the web-site.
- Non-members wishing to access the posters/talks on-line can apply to become a Division member and then access them through the web-site. This member benefit will continue as long as membership is renewed. Alternatively, non-members can purchase a password for access to the content of a single meeting.
Trevor Penning, Chair Publication's Committee
Short Courses in Drug Metabolism and Chemical Toxicology
Philadelphia, Wednesday of National ACS meeting, August 20, 2008
Griff Humphreys reports that TOXI will sponsor a short course entitled "Chemical Toxicology: A Chemist's Roadmap to Reduce Bioactivation Liabilities in Drug Candidates" at the upcoming Fall ACS conference in Philadelphia (Aug 16-21). The 1-day course will be offered on Wednesday August 20.
The course should be useful to medicinal chemists, drug metabolism scientists and other scientists interested in learning more about the background of mechanistic drug metabolism mediated toxicology and how to apply this knowledge to drug discovery and development. It will provide multiple case studies of approaches to limit bioactivation liabilities as well as overall strategies of how to deal with the issue.
Course Topics will include:
- introduction to drug metabolism and mechanisms of bioactivation,
- overview of the enzymes important in bioactivation,
- important species and inter-subject differences in enzyme expression,
- methods for investigation of reactive metabolites as part of drug discovery programs,
- case studies of optimization of molecular structure to reduce risk of toxicity,
- mechanisms leading to metabolism-mediated genotoxicity,
- strategies useful for evaluation of reactive intermediates as part of a candidate optimization program,
- covalent binding & relevance to toxicity, and
- in vivo models to study reactive intermediate generation.
The course instructors will be: Fred Guengerich, Christine Fandozzi, Kaushik Mitra, and Griff Humphreys.
More course information and direction on how to register
Griff Humphries, Chair Short course Committee
Call for Nominations for TOXI Division officers:
We would like to encourage all division members to seriously consider running for open division officer positions which are listed below. This is an excellent opportunity to get involved in the division and assist in developing outstanding scientific programs and policies for the future. Please send us your suggestions for candidates, including their agreement to serve, for the following open positions prior to July 31, 2008. Please note that self-nominations are welcome. The candidates will be announced at the August ACS meeting in Philadelphia.
Chair Elect (1 member, 2009 - 2010). The responsibilities of the Chair-Elect are to attend the annual leadership conferences for officers, to pay particular attention to programming issues within the Division, and to assist the Chair as may be requested by that individual. It is also the responsibility of the Chair-Elect to preside at meetings of the Executive Committee when the Chair is absent, as is specified in the Bylaws of the Division.
Executive Committee, Member-at-Large (1 member, 2009 - 2011). There are three members-at-large of the Executive Committee that are elected for three-year terms. The terms are staggered so that a new member of the Executive Committee is elected each year. In nominating members for the position of Executive Committee member-at-large, be mindful of the importance of keeping the leadership both geographically broad, and representative of the many scientific interests and professions that embody the membership of the Division. It is also important when nominating these positions to consider issues of diversity in all respects, and then to think about people who could then be nominated later for other positions as officers of the Division.
Nominations Committee (3 members, 2009).
The Nominating Committee shall consist of three members elected annually. The candidate who
receives the greatest number of votes shall serve as Chair. In making the nominations, the committee should be attentive to issues of diversity and look for broad representation within the membership of the division.
Nomination Committee, Judy Bolton (Chair), judy.bolton@uic.edu, Paul Hollenberg, phollen@umich.edu, Larry Keefer keefer@ncifcrf.gov
Fundraising Headway
The last TOXI Newsletter contained a report on a new fund raising effort, spearheaded by the committee, to ensure the future of TOXI programming activities at the national meetings of the American Chemical Society. The Finance Committee is proud to report that pledges and donations for 2008 now total $17,000, with additional pledges from several companies. This puts us close to the $20,000 annual goal and provides TOXI with a sound financial footing. We have also obtained some NIH (NIEHS) funding for the Fall meeting program (very recent news). Additionally, we already have commitments for $8000 for both 2009 and 2010, so we are well on the way to reaching target goals for those years.
The Finance Committee would like to extend grateful thanks to the companies that have made pledges and donations to support TOXI so far:
Merck and Co.
Pfizer
Eli Lilly and Company
Bristol-Myers Squibb
Millennium Pharmaceuticals
Abbott Labs
Their generous support is critical to meeting the financial needs of TOXI for the fall meeting in Philadelphia and for future ACS meetings. The Finance Committee invites all TOXI members to help us reach our goal of $20,000 by encouraging donations from their employers or by making an individual donation of any size to the fund raising effort, with the added benefit of possible matching donations from employers! Please contact Carmelo Rizzo (c.rizzo@vanderbilt.edu), TOXI Treasurer, for information about how to make a donation.
Pete Dedon, Chair of the TOXI Finance Committee
Chemical Research in Toxicology, Special Issue: Call for Papers
Chemical Research in Toxicology is planning a special issue that will focus on issues and research related to the topic of human- specific drug metabolites in drug development and the new FDA Guidance for Industry: Safety Testing of Drug Metabolites. We covered some of this field before in a Forum in our December 2006 issue (Chem. Res. Toxicol.19, 1559-1560, 1651-1563, 1564-1569, 1570-1579), but we believe that a collection of articles in the February 2009 issue would be in order.
We invite potential authors to submit both:
- articles describing original research relevant to the topic and
- discussions of the general scientific and regulatory aspects.
All contributed articles should conform to the general guidelines and style and will be peer-reviewed. The deadline for receiving articles is 15 November. We hope that you will consider submitting.
We would appreciate an e-mail (crt@vanderbilt.edu) of your intent to contribute, mentioning whether it is primary research or a commentary (you can do both, and multiple original papers from a single laboratory are in order). Thank you in advance for your help. We hope that this will be an important collection of work on a timely subject.
F. Peter Guengerich, Associate Editor, Chemical Research in Toxicology
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