EFMC Medicinal Chemistry 2026
Basel, Switzerland
September 6-11, 2026
Expert‑Coded Retrosynthesis for Today’s Leaders and Tomorrow’s
In September 2026, Basel becomes the centre of European medicinal chemistry. The EFMC Medicinal Chemistry 2026 symposium runs 6–10 September 2026, followed immediately by the 13th EFMC Young Scientists’ Symposium (EFMC‑YMCS) on 10–11 September 2026. Together, these events bring established leaders, industrial innovators, and early‑career scientists into one intensive week of plenaries, parallel scientific sessions, posters, and networking.
EFMC Medicinal Chemistry 2026 is the flagship EFMC meeting, traditionally attracting around 1,000 participants from industry and academia across Europe and beyond. Over five days, three parallel tracks will cover a broad range of topics in medicinal chemistry and chemical biology: from first‑in‑class targets and modality innovation to case studies in drug discovery and development. Directly afterwards, the EFMC Young Scientists’ Symposium shifts the spotlight to the next generation—highlighting national prize winners, early‑career keynote speakers, and flash presentations selected from submitted abstracts.
Across both meetings, SYNTHIA® Retrosynthesis Software will be there to support the same core question every medicinal chemist faces: how do we move from molecular ideas to practical synthetic routes quickly, creatively, and reliably? SYNTHIA® is built on one of the most extensive sets of expert‑coded organic chemistry rules, capturing decades of synthetic insight across reaction classes, heterocycles, catalysis, fluorination, photochemistry, enzymatic transformations, and more. This curated rule base allows SYNTHIA® to propose realistic, literature‑backed disconnections for everything from fragments and macrocycles to beyond‑Ro5 compounds and complex, heavily functionalized scaffolds.
At EFMC Medicinal Chemistry 2026, we’ll focus on how experienced discovery teams use SYNTHIA® to:
- Compare multiple routes for new leads and candidates in minutes, not weeks
- Support late‑stage route optimization and “second‑generation” strategies
- Integrate synthetic accessibility into AI/ML and structure‑based design workflows
- Embed greener, more sustainable thinking into route design from day one
At the Young Scientists’ Symposium, we’ll put special emphasis on skills that set early‑career chemists up for success: using retrosynthesis software as a thinking partner, learning from expert‑coded chemistry, and turning bold structural ideas into routes you can actually run in the lab. It’s an ideal setting for students and postdocs to test their own target ideas, get feedback, and see how digital tools can amplify—not replace—their synthetic intuition.
If you’re planning to be in Basel for EFMC Medicinal Chemistry, EFMC‑YMCS, or both, make time to visit the SYNTHIA® booth. Bring the scaffolds, series, or teaching examples that matter to you—difficult heterocycles, macrocycles, or open‑ended library ideas—and we’ll explore how SYNTHIA® expert‑coded chemistry can open up new, practical routes. Whether you’re a seasoned project lead or a young scientist building your toolkit, you’ll leave with concrete ideas for making your next synthesis faster, more creative, and better supported by routes you can trust.
