Author Archive

Updated guidelines and standards for MedChemComm

We’re about to publish our first new issue of 2016 and with it come some changes to the journal which we hope will enhance MedChemComm for our readers, authors and reviewers.

More detailed scope and significance guidelines
We’ve updated our scope and significance guidelines to provide more detail about the type of research we publish, to help authors decide if MedChemComm is the right journal for their article. Also we now ask authors to provide a very brief statement on submission of their article which describes why their research is a significant advance in their field. This information assists our editors and referees in assessing the article’s suitability for publication in the journal.

Introducing ‘Research Articles’
Primary research articles in MedChemComm, which were previously called ‘Concise Articles’, are now ‘Research Articles’. There’s no change in the length or style of articles; ‘Research Articles’ can accommodate any type of primary research article, including communication and full paper styles. The change in name is purely to better reflect this breadth of style. You’ll start seeing the new article name from issue 2 this year.

Article layout
One of the most important aspects of an article from a reader’s point of view is that it’s easy to find and read, with the key information readily available. Therefore we’ve updated guidelines on writing titles and abstracts, which gives advice on how to make these as impactful as possible. This is something we’ll now ask referees to comment on when assessing a manuscript. Also we’ll be limiting the amount of experimental detail included in the main text to two journal pages. Authors should still provide as much experimental information and data as is required for their research; however anything over the two pages should be included in the supplementary information rather than the main text.

Experimental information and data
It’s important that the research published in MedChemComm has the highest levels of integrity and reproducibility; therefore we’ve updated our guidelines on experimental information and data. These give authors information on how much experimental detail should be included, what data are required and the format in which they should be presented.

Feel free to send us any comments or suggestions about these changes or anything else to do with the journal. Thank you to all our authors, reviewers and readers for your continued support, and I hope you enjoy reading MedChemComm in 2016.

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MedChemWatch now online

The new edition of MedChemWatch, the monthly newsletter from our partners at EFMC, is now available online. It includes a round-up of the latest news from several European medicinal chemistry Societies

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In the Pipeline articles from Derek Lowe now featured in MedChemComm

The new year brings a host of new features in MedChemComm. The first of these is that we are now featuring articles by medicinal chemist and blogger Derek Lowe. These articles, which give opinion and insight into both the science and business sides of drug discovery, will be selected from those published in his In the Pipeline column in the Royal Society of Chemistry magazine Chemistry World, bringing this content to a new audience.

Take a look at the first article in issue 1 of MedChemComm, and look out for further announcements about new features in MedChemComm through the year.

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Christian Heinis receives MedChemComm Lectureship at EFMC-ISMC

Christian Heinis with MedChemComm Managing Editor Richard Kelly. Photograph: Fabien Venturi

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MedChemComm Lectureship – nominations now open!

Nominations for the MedChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship are now open. This annual Lectureship recognises an emerging scientist who has made a significant contribution to medicinal chemistry or a related field in the early part of their independent career.

To make a nomination, please contact the MedChemComm Editorial Office with the name and affiliation of the person you are nominating. Nominees must have completed their PhD on or after the 31st December 2004.

Closing date for Nominations is the 30th June 2014

The decision to award the Lectureship will be made by a panel of MedChemComm Editorial Board members. The recipient will receive a contribution towards speaking at a conference. Previous Lectureship winners are Professor Patrick Gunning (University of Toronto, Canada) and Professor Christian Heinis (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland).

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MedChemComm winners at the 7th BMCS Symposium

Congratulations to Duncan Hay and James Clulow, winners of the MedChemComm prizes at the 7th Biological and Medicinal Chemistry Symposium.

Duncan (University of Oxford), won the prize for best oral presentation for his research on SGC-CBP30, a chemical probe for CBP/p300 bromodomains while James (Imperial College London) won the prize for best poster for his research into using quantitative activity-based chemical proteomics to explore the targets of electrophilic natural products.

The symposium, organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Biological & Medicinal Chemistry interest group, was held in Cambridge on 13th December 2013.

BMCS Committee Member Dave Alker presents awards to Duncan Hay (above) and James Clulow (below)

 

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Congratulations to Christian Heinis – 2013 MedChemComm Lectureship winner

Christian HeinisCongratulations to Professor Christian Heinis from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, who is the recipient of the 2013 MedChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship.

Professor Heinis receives the Lectureship in recognition of his research into drugs in the “middle space” between small molecules and biologicals, in particular for his work on cyclic peptide therapeutics.He will deliver the lecture at the 2014 EFMC International Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry in Lisbon, Portugal.

The  annual MedChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship is given to a researcher who has made a significant contribution to medicinal chemistry research in the early part of their career. The recipient must also have published an article in MedChemComm. Nominations are received from members of the public and the recipient is chosen by a committee formed of members of the Editorial Board.        


Biography of Christian Heinis

Christian Heinis studied biochemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) where he also did a PhD in the research group of Prof. Dr. Dario Neri. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Prof. Dr. Kai Johnsson at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne (EPFL) and in the group of Sir Gregory Winter at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge, UK. In 2008 he was appointed Assistant Professor with tenure track for Bioorganic Chemistry at EPFL and since 2009 he is holding a professorship of the Swiss National Science Foundation. The general research interest of Christian Heinis is the development of novel and innovative therapeutic strategies using chemical and biological methodologies and tools. Christian is a scientific founder of the start-up company Bicycle Therapeutics.


Recent articles in MedChemComm by Christian Heinis

Phage display libraries of differently sized bicyclic peptides
Inmaculada Rentero Rebollo, Alessandro Angelini and Christian Heinis  
Med. Chem. Commun., 2013,4, 145-150

 Graphical Abstract

Strategies to prolong the plasma residence time of peptide drugs
Lisa Pollaro and Christian Heinis  
Med. Chem. Commun., 2010,1, 319-324

Graphical Abstract

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MedChemComm call for papers: Carbohydrate themed issue

MedChemComm themed issue: Carbohydrates

Guest Editors: Sylvie Garneau-Tsodikova (University of Kentucky, USA) and Timor Baasov (Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Israel)

Submission Deadline: 28th February 2014

Submissions are now open for a high-profile themed issue on Carbohydrates, due for publication in MedChemComm in summer 2014. The scope of the issue covers all areas of carbohydrate chemistry and biology which are relevant to drug discovery.

New research in MedChemComm is published as Concise Articles: flexible articles that have no strict page limits or formatting requirements. Manuscripts can be submitted in any reasonable format using our submission system. Template is not required. Please indicate that it is for the Carbohydrates themed issue in the comments to the editor field. The level of quality of this issue will be high, and all manuscripts will undergo the journal’s normal peer review process.

The deadline for submissions to the themed issue is 28th February 2014, although submissions before this date are of course welcomed.

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Editors’ Choice: Structure-guided design of a selective BCL-XL inhibitor

This article describes the structure-guided optimisation of a screening hit against the pro-survival protein BCL-XL, which is often overexpressed in solid tumors and results in malignant tumor cells showing resistance to anticancer treatments.

Structure-guided design of a selective BCL-XL inhibitor
Guillaume Lessene, Peter E Czabotar, Brad E Sleebs, Kerry Zobel, Kym N Lowes, Jerry M Adams, Jonathan B Baell, Peter M Colman, Kurt Deshayes, Wayne J Fairbrother, John A Flygare, Paul Gibbons, Wilhelmus J A Kersten, Sanji Kulasegaram, Rebecca M Moss, John P Parisot, Brian J Smith, Ian P Street, Hong Yang, David C S Huang and Keith G Watson
Nature Chemical Biology, 9, 390–397, (2013)

Editors’ Choice articles are articles identified as being of high potential interest to medicinal chemists, selected from the wider literature by members of the Editorial Board.

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Call for papers: Chemical Biology for Target Identification and Validation

MedChemComm themed issue: Chemical Biology for Target Identification and Validation

Guest Editors: Nathanael Gray (Harvard University, USA) and Lyn Jones (Pfizer, Cambridge, USA)

Submission Deadline: 30th September 2013

Submissions are now open for a high-profile themed issue on Chemical Biology for Target Identification and Validation, due for publication in MedChemComm in early 2014. It will receive great exposure and significant promotion.

Scope
Part of MedChemComm’s mission is to publish high level chemistry biology research which enables drug discovery. This special issue will be broad in scope, covering advances in the discovery, development and application of chemical biology to elucidate and validate new therapeutic targets. Relevant topics include (but are not limited to):

  • the use of –omics and imaging technologies
  • immunoprecipitation and affinity chromatography to identify novel targets and therapeutic modalities
  • the creation and development of new techniques to assess target (and off-target) engagement
  • advances in areas such as chemogenomics, microarrays, yeast three hybrid, RNAi and chem/bioinformatics

New research in MedChemComm is published as Concise Articles. This article type encompasses both Communication and Full Paper styles and is generally between 3 and 7 pages in length, but there is no strict page limit.

Manuscripts can be submitted in any reasonable format using our submission system. Template is not required. Please indicate that it is for the Chemical Biology themed issue in the comments to the editor field. The level of quality of this issue will be high, and all manuscripts will undergo the journal’s normal peer review process.

The deadline for submissions to the themed issue is 30th September 2013, although submissions before this date are of course welcomed.

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