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).