Claire Speight - School of Pharmacy and Chemistry, Liverpool John Moores University

‘A practical Introduction to Chemoinformatics’ is a three day, short course held by the Department of Information Studies at the University of Sheffield. It aims to give attendees a broad introduction to the relatively new, but still hugely important, subject of chemoinformatics. Through the generous support of CSA (Chemical Structure Association) Trust and the MGMS (Molecular Graphics and Modelling Society), the organisers were able to provide two student bursaries, one of which I was lucky enough to receive. 

The course has been consistently over booked throughout its seven year history, and this year was no exception. Of the 19 people who were lucky enough to attend, there was a wide range of people from both industry and academia. Several fields were represented within the attendees, including bioinformatics, drug design, and toxicology. Some people where from chemistry backgrounds, who wanted to learn about the informatics side; others were computer programmers wanting to learn the chemistry side; while a few people where attending to simply learn as much as they could about both. This diversity of backgrounds gave the team at Sheffield the very difficult task of covering many areas of chemoinformatics, in just three days! This may explain why the course required a very intense structure.

The course material was taught using lectures; practical classes; and group work. The group work was a running topic for discussion over the first two days and culminated in a short, 15 minute presentation on the topic. This enabled the groups to start discussions on the first evening (which also allowed everyone to become acquainted), and then add knowledge to their presentations as the course continued. The lectures and practical sessions were divided into 9 sessions to cover all relevant areas of Chemoinformatics, including Database searching, Diversity and Compound selection, QSAR and Pharmacophore generation. The lectures were well presented and the practical classes were easy to follow, considering that most people on the course met at least one new piece of software, and there were a few individuals who had never even used SMILES before. The whole group was able to proceed at the same pace however, due to the excellent help given from the course tutors.

All of this hard work was rewarded, however. Each evening ended with a fine three course meal at some of the best restaurants in and around Sheffield. An excellent blend of work and play! These social outings were a brilliant opportunity to talk to fellow attendees, find out how the Chemoinformatics course could be useful to them, and also networking in general. The outings were very well organised considering there were nearly 25 within the group, which inevitably took over the restaurant. All three evenings were very much enjoyed by all.

The course gave all attendees the opportunity to learn the basics of many areas of chemoinformatics, without the need to apply for a full qualification in the subject (which in most cases would be unnecessary). This is unlike anything else which is currently available. The expertise brought to the course by the lecturing staff provided an excellent working environment. From a personal perspective, the course gave me the opportunity to try methods I wouldn’t normally use within my own research group. It also gave me an insight into how the tools we use for toxicity prediction, are used differently for chemical screening and drug design.

Overall, the general feeling from attendees was that the course equipped them with the basic knowledge needed to go on and investigate the specific areas further. Although the course was intense, all agreed that nothing should be removed. The course contains all relevant areas of chemoinformatics without being overwhelming. It achieves its goals well, and it is of little surprise that it is over booked every year.

‘A practical Introduction to Chemoinformatics’, 17^th – 20^th June, 2008

Author: Claire Speight - School of Pharmacy and Chemistry, Liverpool John Moores University