On Thursday 20 September, the RSC welcomed Prof Johann de Bono, Deputy Director of the Drug Development Unit at the ICR,  to the Chemistry Centre in London. Johann led on the clinical development of abiraterone which is now a successful  treatment for prostate cancer. 
 
The keynote lecture – Transforming Prostate Cancer Care Through Chemistry - stressed the value of the ICR structure of having biologists, structural chemists, medicinal chemists, molecular pathologists and clinicians all working on one campus. This multidisciplinary team was crucial to success in developing a drug that is delivering some benefit to patients – CRUK set up drug discover programme. Prostate Cancer is the commonest cancer in men. In the UK, it is the second most common cause of male cancer death after lung cancer. One man dies in the UK every hour from the diease.

Following the lecture, there was a panel discussion - focussing on how discovery programmes such as the successful work that led to the discovery of Abiraterone could be repeated within the UK academic environment? Prof de Bono was joined by Dr Duncan Holmes (GlaxoSmithKline) and Prof Simon Ward (University of Sussex) on the panel and the discussion was chaired by Dr David Fox (RSC).

On 13 June 2012, the Chemistry Centre in London played host to Professors Akira Suzuki and Ei-ichi Negishi, who were recently made Honorary Fellows of the RSC. Speaking not only in front of a packed house, their lectures were also broadcast live on the Chemistry World website

Professor Suzuki (Hokkaido University) spoke about his inspiration for becoming a chemist. He started out studying maths, yet an organic chemistry textbook fascinated him so much that he switched subjects. He ended his talk by appealing to the audience to use his “Suzuki cross-coupling reaction” to make useful products; this would make him very happy!
Professor Negishi (Purdue University) spoke about “The Magical Power of Transition Metals”, arguing that transition metal catalysts are sustainable because they give selective products and can be reused many times. He was so passionate about his research that he could have spoken for hours!


The lectures ended with a pertinent question: “What is the most important issue that organic synthesis should be helping to solve?” Professor Negishi answered that climate change is the most pressing issue of our time, and organic chemists can help us meet this challenge by finding a way to catalytically convert carbon dioxide into something that won’t cause global warming. He even said that it is a project that he is personally working on... watch this space!

The morning session featured lectures from Dr Ross Denton (Univ. Nottingham),  Dr Marc Kimber (Univ. Loughborough), Dr Jason Camp (Univ. Nottingham) and Dr Wesley Moran (Univ. Huddesfield). In the afternoon lectures were received from Dr Stephen Goldup (Queen Mary University), Dr Carmen Galan (Univ. Bristol), Dr Stephen Fletcher (Univ. Oxford) and Dr Stefan Howorka (University College London).   The chemistry presented ranged from catalytic phosphorous-based reactions, enantioselective desymmetrisation of endo-peroxides, 'sugar-powered' catalysis, hypervalent iodine asymmetric catalysis, the synthesis of 'small' rotaxanes, highly efficient glycoside synthesis, studies on retinaldehyde photoisomerisation and the structure of S-layer proteins. 

The finale was the plenary lecture from Professor Jim Anderson (University College London) featuring some 'imaginary' chemistry.  Dr Steve Wailes from Syngenta provided the closing remarks for the meeting.  All agreed that is was a superb day of Chemistry with science of the highest calibre. 
YC13 will be held at Imperial College London on the 26th April 2013.