On April 24, 2026, PharmaBlock’s 2026 Spring Drug Discovery Conference wrapped up successfully in Nanjing, China. The event brought together over 100 distinguished guests from the global drug discovery field, including top academic institutions, multinational pharmaceutical companies, innovative local biotechs, and AI-driven drug discovery startups. Industry leaders and R&D experts gathered in Nanjing to share cutting-edge insights and hold in-depth discussions on building block innovation, medicinal chemistry advances, novel therapeutic modalities, and the integration of AI and pharmaceutical R&D, building a high-level collaboration platform for industry-university-research cooperation in drug discovery.
Dr. Djuric shared the core value of enabling chemical technologies in drug R&D. Drawing on his experience at AbbVie, he noted that innovative chemical technologies accelerate drug discovery by shortening cycles, cutting costs and improving success rates. He introduced that flow photochemistry rapidly constructs 3D heterocyclic scaffolds and enables scalable production, while electrochemical cyanation offers a low-potential, high-functional-group-tolerance route for piperidine derivatives, expanding the chemical space of drug molecules.
He also presented breakthroughs in integrated R&D systems: a continuous-flow platform coupled with biological screening compresses the timeline from compound synthesis to activity assay to under 24 hours, greatly boosting R&D efficiency. High-temperature high-pressure flow chemistry breaks traditional reaction limits, enabling synthesis of hard-to-access heterocycles and efficient functional group transformation, expanding synthetic boundaries for small-molecule drug R&D.
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