Dear Congress Participants and Honored Guests,

I have the pleasure to wish you all welcome to 19th Helsinki Drug Research congress. I hope that you will enjoy both the scientific and the social program as well as your stay in Helsinki during these days.

We are proud to present this three-day program of interesting and current topics. Our aim in the main organizing committee has been to plan the symposia so that the boundaries between the traditional disciplines are as vague as possible. Therefore, we have chosen topics that are multidisciplinary and make cross-interaction possible during this congress. We believe that it will benefit the modern drug research. The oral sessions and poster presentations will give both young and established scientists the chance to present their work, learn about new research results and talk about their experience with colleagues. Helsinki Drug Research 2008 (HDR 2008) is designed to provide a complete educational event allowing each and every attendee, both from the academia and industry, the ability to customize their experience with the goal of advancing pharmaceutical research.

I would like to express my gratitude to the National and International Scientific Advisory Boards for their input during the preparation for this congress. We also wish to give our warmest thanks to our main sponsor Orion Pharma as well as our other sponsors for their financial support.

On the behalf of the main organizing committee, I wish that all of you will get fruitful new ideas and have inspiring discussions after presentations and during the poster sessions.

Sincerely,

Anne Juppo

Ph.D., Professor in Industrial Pharmacy, University of Helsinki

Chairman of the Main Organizing Committee of Helsinki Drug Research 2008