The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 268 No 7198 p700
18 May 2002

Anti-infectives: the way forward

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society is to host a two-day multidisciplinary symposium on "Anti-infectives: the way forward" on 8 and 9 July. The aim of the meeting is to broaden discussion on the response to antibiotic resistance to cover the range of life sciences that have an interest in šantibiotics.

The theme of the first morning will be the scale of the resistance problem. An introduction by Lord Soulsby, chairman of the House of Lords Select Committee on Resistance to Antibiotics, will be followed by an assessment of the problem nationally by a speaker from the Public Health Laboratory Service and a global perspective by a speaker from the World Health Organization. The morning concludes with a paper on the significance to human medicine of antimicrobial resistance in animals.

The first of two afternoon sessions will examine novel strategies, including new targets for antibacterials and antivirals and new modalities for treating bacterial infections. The day's final session will look at strategies for novel drug development, with papers on structure-activity modelling and genomic screening.

Day two will begin with a session on clinical challenges, at which a paper on the changing pattern of multidrug resistant infection will be followed by contributions on antibiotic resistance in Gram-positive and in Gram-negative bacteria. The second morning session will examine prescribing practices and resistance, with three papers covering hospital, community and veterinary prescribing.

The afternoon session, on national and international implications, will begin with a paper on holistic approaches and complementary measures, after which an assessment of the overall approach to the problem of resistance will be followed by a final summing-up and discussion.

The full registration fee (which includes morning, coffee, lunch and afternoon tea on both days and a wine reception after the first day) is £240. A discounted fee of £160 is available to those paying by personal cheque who are members of the organising bodies (the Society and the Institute of Biology) or supporting organisations (Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Association of Clinical Microbiologists, British Electrophoresis Society, British Society for Cell Biology, Institute of Trichologists, Society for Applied Microbiology and Society for General Microbiology).

Further details and registration forms are available from the Conference and Events Manager, Institute of Biology, 20-22 Queensberry Place, London SW7 2DZ (tel 020 7581 8333 ext 237; fax 020 7589 3606; e-mail a.scales@iob.org). The organisers cannot guarantee acceptance of registrations received after 1 June.

Natural products

On 6 June, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Phytochemical Society of Europe are holding a joint one-day symposium entitled "Does money grow on trees? (Everything you wanted to know about natural products and business)".

The following papers will be given: "Carbohydrate analogues as bioactive chemicals in British plants and herbal medicines" by Professor Robert Nash (Molecular Nature); "Going for gold: mining plant metabolism for pharmaceutical leads" by Dr Angela Stafford (Phytera); "Cannabis as a prescription medicines" by Dr Brian Whittle (GW Pharmaceuticals); "Prospecting with insect chemosensors for bioactives in plant and animal stress" by Professor John Pickett (Institute of Arable Crop Research, Rothamsted); "Novel pharmaceutical medicines from traditional plant remedies" by Dr Daryl Rees (Phytopharm); "New approaches to the characterisation of plant extracts" by Professor Peter Hylands (Oxford Natural Products); and "Shuffling genes for a new deal in super natural products" by Professor Peter Leadlay (department of biochemistry, University of Cambridge).

The registration fee (which includes morning coffee, lunch and afternoon tea) is £160, reduced to £90 to members of the organising bodies. Further details and registration forms are available from Dr John Clements, Room 301B, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, 1 Lambeth High Street, London SE1 7JN (fax 020 7572 2506).