DIRECTOR'S MESSAGE

It gives me great pleasure to invite you to the Annual Chemistry & Pharmacology of Drugs Abuse Conference at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. This meeting is supported in part by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) for the purpose of presenting, educating, and discussing frontline topics in medicinal chemistry and pharmacology of drug-abuse research. The CPDA conference sees participation of internationally known top-tier scientists from academia, industry, NIDA, and those heavily involved in the Biotech industry. In addition, NIDA administrators will be available for consultation regarding funding opportunities.

Scientists are utilizing medicinal chemistry to work toward generating new and effective substance-use disorder (SUD) pharmacotherapeutics and experimental tools for investigating abuse-related pharmacology and pathology in vitro and in vivo. Given the unmet medical needs associated with SUDs coupled with the highly relevant opioid crisis occurring today, this will be a prominent focus of our conference. An important component of such an effort involves the generation of new chemical entities and their pharmacological profiling in relevant addiction models, as well as the formulation and validation of appropriate experimental paradigms that have translational significance. Speakers will present their work regarding ongoing SUD research and its related implications.

Presentations will also highlight ways in which medicinal chemistry can inform our understanding of the pathological mechanisms underlying drug addiction and the pharmacological underpinnings of potential treatment approaches. For instance, generating new molecular imaging probes and ligands that can help identify and annotate new SUD drug targets of therapeutic relevance. These programmatic subjects should shed further light on specific mechanisms of molecular pharmacology which could potentially be leveraged and optimized for therapeutic gain against drug addiction.

This conference will provide a unique opportunity to integrate recent laboratory findings in medicinal chemistry with the pharmacology and pathological mechanisms underlying addiction. Our hope is for this conference to allow discussion that will continue to aid the search for effective pharmacotherapies to treat SUDs. We look forward to providing an environment of learning and scientific speculation for our esteemed guests by exposing them to cutting-edge aspects of drug abuse research while also providing an opportunity to engage with those from the scientific, corporate, and biotech community.

We look forward to seeing you in August.

Very best,

Alexandros Makriyannis, Ph.D
George D. Behrakis Chair
in Pharmaceutical Biotechnology
Director, Center for Drug Discovery