Abstract

The Medicinal Chemistry Divisions of the two Belgian Chemical Societies, the Koninklijke Vlaamse Chemische Vereniging (KVCV) and the Société Royale de Chimie (SRC), are organising every year an international one-day symposium with the aim to update participants on selected areas of pharmaceutical research by specialists in their respective field. MedChem 2019 will be held on Friday November 22, 2019, in Brussels. The programme of the day will include six invited lectures and three oral communications selected from submitted abstracts. This year, the symposium will delve into the developments in the therapeutic use of peptides. As an intermediate class of compounds sitting in the soft spot between small molecules and biologics, peptide drugs have now firmly grasped the attention of the pharmaceutical industry over the past decades. The number of peptides in clinical trials keeps on increasing, indicating that we are now well beyond the revival or renaissance of peptide drug discovery. As they are represented in many key therapeutic areas, we can confidently predict that more peptides will reach the market soon. It is time to discuss their multifaceted therapeutic potential.