An international group of scientists working in the areas of carbohydrate chemistry and chemical biology gathered in the Gleneagle Hotel in Killarney, Ireland for the third in an innovative series of chemistry conferences. The third ERA-Chemistry “Flash” Conference entitled “Carbohydrates at the Interfaces of Biology, Medicine and Materials Science” was hosted under the auspices of the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET) from March 9-13, 2008.  IRCSET and ERA-Chemistry gratefully acknowledge promotional support from EuCheMS.  The conference was also promoted by Thieme Chemistry and the Royal Society of Chemistry Journal “Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry”.

"Flash" conferences were inspired by the Gordon conference model and aim to bring together experienced and young researchers to discuss topics at the frontiers of chemical research with a focus primarily but not exclusively on European scientists.  The scientific scope of these conferences is concerned exclusively with emerging topics of immediate importance for developing chemical research: "hot topics" are proposed six months in advance by the members of the Scientific Advisory Board of ERA-Chemistry, a panel of European experts nominated by the partner countries. While the conferences are based on a number of high-level lectures by invited internationally renowned specialists, each attendee is encouraged to contribute through poster presentations or short talks.

The conference drew over 100 delegates from all over Europe as well as representatives from Japan, USA and South Africa. Speakers included Mikael Bols, Copenhagen University, Denmark; Anthony Davis, University of Bristol, UK; Ben Davis, University of Oxford, UK; Hans Joachim Gabius, Ludwig Maximilians University, Germany; David Y. Gin, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre, USA; Horst Kunz, Johannes Gutenberg University, Germany; Shin-Ichiro Nishimura, Hokkaido University, Japan and Nicola Pohl, Iowa State University, USA. 

Modern carbohydrate chemistry encompasses the synthesis, analysis and study of the carbohydrates which are relevant to biology, biotechnology, medicine and materials science. The focus of the conference was on novel concepts rather than proven applications.  A programme of 36 lectures, including a number of talks from PhD students, and 47 posters covered recent progress and challenges in areas which included the synthesis and (chemo)enzymatic synthesis of carbohydrates and glycoconjugates; novel chemical methods for carbohydrate analysis; glycobiology, glycomics; glyconanotechnology, development of therapeutics, vaccines and adjuvants based on carbohydrates; applications of enzymes in carbohydrate synthesis; polysialic acid as well as structural studies and analysis of carbohydrates and glycoconjugates.
Professor Paul Murphy, Chairperson of the conference, from the University College Dublin Centre for Synthesis and Chemical Biology, commented "The delegates showed that excellent progress has been made in the field recently. Despite these advances, many important problems remain for carbohydrate chemistry.  The conference format will have facilitated generating novel ideas and collaborations to work towards addressing these challenges."

Thanks to the generosity of Prof. Frank Hegarty from University College Dublin, IRCSET and ERA-Chemistry were able to fund the attendance at the conference of five promising young European researchers.  These were Caterina Araujo from the University of Lisbon, Portugal, Friedrich Freiberger from Hannover Medical School, Germany; Sergio Giuffrida from the University of Palermo, Italy; Robin Ristl from the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Austria and Simone Dedola of the John Innes Center, UK.

The international scientific organising committee also included Professor Stefan Oscarson, UCD CSCB; Professor Peter Seeberger, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich; Switzerland; Professor Reko Leino, Ako Akademi, Finland and Dr Angela Savage, National University of Ireland, Galway.  The local organizing committee comprised Professor Murphy, Professor Frank Hegarty and from IRCSET, Dr Jennifer Brennan.
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