The short courses will be held on Sunday, September 18, 2011 two hours in the morning and two hour in the afternoon. The participants are adviced to arrive a day earlier, on Saturday, September 17.

Course 1. Polymorphs and other solid forms: identification, properties and analytical principles
Rolf Hilfiker, Solvias AG, Switzerland  

Course objective: Students will grasp the basic knowledge about the role and importance of polymorphism in various stages of drug discovery and development process. At the end of the course students will be able to identify and select solids with optimal characteristics for the intended use as well as to choose and apply suitable analytical methods for their characterization.

Course 2. Chiral recognition and separation mechanisms
Nelu Grinberg, Boehringer-Ingelheim, USA 

Course objective: This short course covers principles and practice of the chiral recognition in biological systems as well as methodology required for successful identification and separation of chiral drug molecules and biomolecules.
After completion of the course students will be able to recognize the importance of chirality in drug discovery, to understand the principles of chiral separation techniques and to be able to approach practical problems of chiral separation from different perspectives.
Several practical examples will be analyzed. Combination of HPLC techniques with various chiral stationary phases and various detection systems will be discussed.

Course 3. QSAR analysis - principles, methods and applications
Stefan Dove, University of Regensburg, Germany

Course objective: The correlation of biological activities with molecular descriptors leads to QSAR models which provide insights into the mechanism of drug action and enable predictions of novel compounds with desired properties. The course imparts basic knowledge on QSAR methods and their application, deals with LFER-based descriptors of hydrophobic, electronic and steric effects and covers some problems of model validation. Classical approaches like Hansch and Free-Wilson analysis will be presented with examples.
3D-QSAR methods (CoMFA, CoMSIA) based on the correlation of biological data with molecular fields (hydrophobic, electronic and steric field variables) of aligned structures will be explained, followed by the demonstration of a typical CoMFA approach (software Sybyl, Tripos L.P.).