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Vol. 25 No. 5
September-October 2003

Conference Call

Reports from recent conferences and symposia
See also www.iupac.org/symposia

Heterocyclic Chemistry

by Lisa McElwee-White

Drs. Richard Johnston (Eli Lilly and Company) and Eric Scriven (Reilly Industries, Inc.) at the poster session.

The 4th Annual Florida Heterocyclic Conference was held at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, USA, from 10-12 March 2003. The conference was organized by Alan Katritzky, Kenan Professor of Chemistry at the University of Florida. Attendees included 168 industrial and academic chemists, along with 40 student participants.

The first day of the conference featured a short course on fundamentals of heterocyclic chemistry. Instructors for the short course were Katritzky and Dan Comins (North Carolina State University). Lectures on subsequent days included a discussion of heterocyclic chemistry in the pharmaceutical industry by Sverker von Unge (AstraZeneca), Mike Butters (AstraZeneca), and Jeff Marcoux (Merck). Catalytic reactions for the preparation of heterocycles were presented by Siegfried Blechert (Technische Universität Berlin), Robert Grubbs (Caltech), and Shu Kobayashi (University of Tokyo). Preparation of a library of bleomycin analogues was the topic of a lecture by Sidney Hecht (University of Virginia). Reductions and anionic chemistry formed a common thread for the talks by Subba Rao (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore), Norbert De Kimpe (Ghent University), and Miguel Yus (Universidad de Alicante). Other lectures were presented by Jan Bake (Norwegian University of Truncheon) on nitro pyridines and Gordon Gribble (Dartmouth College) on indoles. During breaks, 42 posters from industry and academia were available for viewing.

Proceeds from the conference are being used to support ARKIVOC (Archive for Organic Chemistry), a free peer-reviewed online journal covering all aspects of organic chemistry. The journal is available at <www.arkat-usa.org>.

Lisa McElwee-White <[email protected]> is a professor of chemistry at the University of Florida and a titular member of the Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry Division Committee.