QSAR Reborn in Boston: An ACS Symposium in Memory of Dr. Phillip Magee
John Block, Lowell Hall and I are organizing a QSAR Symposium for the ACS meeting which will be held 19-23 August in Boston. The official Symposium title is: “QSAR Reborn: Modern QSAR Techniques and Applications - A Symposium in Memory of Dr. Phillip Magee.”
I hope that anyone involved in any form of QSAR will consider submitting a paper for oral presentation. Phil was a long-standing member of the QSAR community and one of the pioneers in utilizing QSAR, utilizing his knowledge of physical organic chemistry to model bioactivities of agrochemicals, transdermal properties of molecules and molecular toxicities. The intended scope of the Symposium is correspondingly very broad, with papers on scoring functions or predicting toxicity being as appropriate as those dealing with “classical” QSAR and QSPR.
It is certainly common to apply this technique to human pharmaceuticals, but he helped pioneer its application to agrochemicals as well. After retiring from the Ortho Chemical Division of Standard Oil, Phil used QSAR to study transdermal properties of molecules. Until his stroke, Phil was utilizing both his knowledge of physical organic chemistry and QSAR descriptors to model bioactivities. It is therefore appropriate that a symposium in his honor include speakers who develop QSAR methodologies as well as those who apply QSAR methodologies to solve difficult problems. Phil was the first President of the International QSAR Group and served for a number of years in that position. People who knew or worked with him are particularly encouraged to participate.
Appropriate topics include but are not limited to: QSAR descriptor development (physico-chemical, topological, quantum mechanical, structural, geometrical and stereochemical), analysis techniques (2D, 3D and topological QSAR, neural networks, classification methods, etc.) and real-world applications (drug and agrochemical design; toxicity prediction; and environmental property modelling).
Abstracts must be submitted electronically. To do so, please go to:
http://oasys.acs.org/acs/234nm/comp/papers/index.cgi
and select “QSAR Reborn” as your topic of choice. The deadline for submission is 2 April 2007.
The symposium is being sponsored by the COMP and AGRO Divisions of the American Chemical Society and by the QSAR and Modelling Society. Some money from commercial sponsorships is already in hand and more is anticipated, so we will probably be able to help with expenses in a few cases. If you need such support, please contact myself (bclark[at]tripos.com) or one of the other organizers (john.block[at]oregonstate.edu or halllh[at]comcast.net) as soon as possible.
‘Hoping to see you in Boston.
Bob Clark
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