The Chemical Biology-Medicinal Chemistry continuum: EFMC's vision

Abstract: The European Federation for Medicinal chemistry and Chemical biology (EFMC) is a federation of learned societies. It groups organizations of European scientists working in a dynamic field spanning chemical biology and medicinal chemistry. New ideas, tools and technologies emerging from a wide array of scientific disciplines continuously energize this rapidly evolving area. Medicinal chemistry is the design, synthesis and optimization of biologically active molecules, and aims at discovering new drug candidates. This description largely overlaps with the scope of chemical biology, which is now a mature field of science and for which a more precise definition of what it englobes, in the frame of EFMC, is timely. This article discusses chemical biology as currently understood by EFMC, including all activities dealing with the design and synthesis of biologically active chemical tools, and their use to probe, characterize or influence biological systems