The 59th annual graduate student-led regional medicinal chemistry conference, MIKIW, was hosted at the University of Iowa last weekend (April 29 - May 1, 2022). It was the first such in-person annual meeting held since 2019 due to circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since its first conference in 1963, the annual event has been referred to as ‘MIKI’ because its founders originated from the Departments of Medicinal Chemistry at the Universities of Minnesota, Illinois at Chicago, Kansas, and Iowa. Since then, these four universities have alternately hosted the MIKI meetings each year. In 2018, the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison joined the original MIKI lineup, thus creating 'MIKIW'.
Participants in the two-day multidisciplinary conference, hosted this year at the new UI College of Pharmacy building, included more than 200 graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and faculty members. Research was presented through symposium talks and poster presentations.
This year, Kate Carroll, a Professor of Chemistry for UF Scripps Biomedical Research, presented the Joseph G. Cannon Keynote Address entitled “Cysteine-Mediated Redox Signaling: Chemical Tools for Biological Discovery”. In addition, opening remarks were made by Iowa Pharmacy Professor and Executive Associate Dean Gary Milavetz, BS, PharmD, RPh, FCCP, FAPhA.
MIKIW is the longest-running and largest regional medicinal chemistry conference in the United States. The MIKIW meetings have historically been organized and led entirely by graduate students on an annual basis.
The MIKIW meeting aims to promote scientific discussion and exchange of ideas that encompass medicinal chemistry, drug discovery, chemical synthesis, bioanalytical chemistry, chemical biology, and drug metabolism between scientists across universities.
2022 student organizers were Moana Hala’ufia, Anna Bartman, and Rachel Crawford.
