Medicinal Chemistry in the Royal Australian Chemical Institute: The Early Years

The concept of a new Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI) Division covering Medicinal and Agricultural Chemistry came from the RACI Division of Physical Chemistry under whose auspices the First Australian Conference on Molecular Design and Structure-Activity Studies was held at the Victorian College of Pharmacy (VCP) in May 1981 as part of the Centenary Celebrations of the VCP. At the 7th National Convention of the RACI in Canberra in August 1982, the Medicinal and Agricultural Chemistry Group attracted some 100 participants, many of them new to the RACI. The success of these meetings was the basis of the formal proposal for the formation of the Division of Medicinal and Agricultural Chemistry which was unanimously approved by the RACI Council on May 24, 1983. The first stand-alone meeting of the new Division in October 1983 highlighted the case for a research-based drug industry in Australia. This editorial covers the period up until 1988, when the Division held the landmark Boden Conference on Biomolecular Design and Development and brought together many key people in the applications of medicinal chemistry in Australia.