PCF2025, Basel
PCF2025 - Registration is open!!
The PhysChem Forum Committee is pleased to announce the next Physical Chemistry Symposium, PCF2025. This will be held at F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Basel, Switzerland, on Monday 13th and Tuesday 14th October 2025. The meeting title is "Advances and Challenges in Physicochemical Profiling for Emerging Modalities in Drug Research". Registration will start at 2pm on the Monday, with three talks starting at 3:30pm followed by gala dinner at 7.30pm. The Monday session will be held in the Radisson Blu Hotel, Steinentorstrasse 25, Basel, with the Tuesday meeting held at F. Hoffmann-La Roche (google map link). The venue is easily accessible by public transport or on foot. A site map and site info leaflet can be found here. The registration for PCF 2025 takes place in Building 7 (ground floor). The visitor parking is located in parking B67.
Accomodation
Delegates are responsible for arranging their own accommodation. We have negociated preferential room rates for those wishing to book accommodation at the designated conference hotel, the Radisson Blu Hotel, Steinentorstrasse 25, Basel. Press here to get more info about how to reach the hotel. There are rooms available with a preferred discount. Please use the promotion code: RO1025. The discount will also apply to the nights either side of the conference should attendees wish to arrive early or depart late. Please note that after Sunday 31st August this promotion code will no longer be valid (more details in the registration form). Booked rooms can be canceled free of charge up to 3 days before arrival. Additionally, hotel guests staying overnight will receive a travelcard, valid for both days of the event. Furthermore, if any attendees have not received their public transport ticket, they can simply present their hotel booking confirmation as proof of eligibility.
Registration
Registration for the meeting is now open. Please use this QR
Programme (provisional and subject to update)
Monday 13th October, Radisson Blue Hotel
| Session 1 - Chair: Antonio Llinas (AstraZeneca, Sweden) |
|
| Time | Session |
| 14:00-15:30 | Registration |
| 15:30-15:40 | Welcome and introduction to PCF2025 |
| 15:40-16:20 | Leveraging machine learning for
predicting ADME properties of targeted protein degraders Raquel Rodriguez-Perez (Novartis, Switzerland) |
| 16:20-17:00 | Closing the
design-make-test-analyze loop: interplay between experiments and predictions
drives PROTACs bioavailability Karolina Kwapień and Johan Wernevik (AstraZeneca, Sweden) |
| 17:00-17:30 | Tea/coffe break |
| 17:30-18:30 | Keynote – Navigating the shifting sands: tackling the evolving drug landscape Paul Dickinson (SEDA, UK) |
| 18:30-19:30 | Social break |
| 19:30-22:00 | Symposium dinner |
Tuesday 14th October, F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Grenzacherstrasse 124, Basel (Google map link).
| Session 1- Antonio Llinas (AstraZeneca, Sweden) |
|
| Time | Session |
| 08:30-09:00 | Late registration and poster set-up |
| 09:00-09:50 | Roche Site Welcome + The History of
Roche Alexander Bieri (Roche, Basel) |
| 09:50-10:30 | Use of cyclic ion mobility mass spectrometry to understand conformational space of BRo5 molecules and its impact on permeability Jehan Claessens (UCB, Belgium) |
| 10:30-11:10 | Tea/coffee break and poster viewing |
| Session 2- Linette Ruston (Seda, UK) |
|
| Time | Session |
| 11:10-11:50 | How the interplay between shape and
polarity can determine the cell permeability of PROTACs Jan Kihlberg (Uppsala University, Sweden) |
| 11:50-12:10 | Flash poster presentations (2 mins each) |
| 12:10-13:40 | Lunch and poster viewing / 30-minutes Roche Research Center tour (in parallel) |
| Session 3 - Chair: Shenaz Bunally (GSK, UK) |
|
| Time | Session |
| 13:40-14:20 | Dynamic logP - Novel LC/MS method to
measure chameleonicity of bRo5 macrocyclic peptides Christian Weinmann (Roche, Switzerland) |
| 14:20-15:00 | Next-generation physicochemical assays
to characterize new modalities Stephane Rodde (Novartis, Switzerland) |
| 15:00-15:40 | Poster prize award followed by tea/coffee break and poster viewing |
| Session 4 - Chair: Magdalena Kierkowicz (UCB, UK) |
|
| Time | Session |
| 15:40-16:20 | A biological strategy for the oral delivery of poorly absorbed therapeutics Randy Mrsny (University of Bath, UK) |
| 16:20-17:00 | How to deliver oral targeted modalities: experiencies from protein kinase inhibitors and PROTACS Hans Lennernäs (Uppsala University, Sweden) |
| 17:00-17:10 | Wrap-up and depart |
Posters
Posters are encouraged, please indicate if you are interested in bringing one when registering. Maximum dimensions A0, or 118 x 84 cm. Deadline for registering posters is Monday 29th September. Portrait is preferred but landscape can be accommodated.
Travel
Basel can be easily reached by plane. Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg Airport (EuroAirport) is located in France, close to the border with Switzerland and Germany. To get to the city center (which is 6 kilometers from the airport) the taxi ride takes about 15 minutes and costs around CHF 50. Alternatively, you can take bus number 50, known as the "EuroAirport Shuttle", which takes about 20 minutes and costs CHF 4.50.
Basel is well connected by train. The main station, Basel-SBB, receives trains from other Swiss cities and European countries. There are also additional stations such as the French SNCF station and the German Badischer Bahnhof.
The figure shows instructions to reach the conference hotel, the Radisson Blue Hotel in Basel:
The conference site, F. Hoffmann-La Roche (google map link) is easily accessible from the Radisson Blu Hotel by public transport (16 minutes) or on foot (ca. 25 minutes).
For departure from the F. Hoffmann-La Roche site, taxis can be booked and an announcement will be made at the conference.
If travelling by car, please ensure you have registered your vehicle details via our registration form, and report to the security officer on duty at the entrance barrier.
Supporters and sponsors
The PhysChem Forum is very grateful to our host F. Hoffmann-La Roche and our sponsors for helping us run PCF2025 as a free-to-attend event.
F. Hoffmann-La Roche: at Pharma Research & Early Development (pRED) in Basel we are more than 1800 dedicated scientists, clinicians, engineers and technicians from almost 60 nations, sharing a passion for developing and bringing new and effective medicines to patients. We combine world-class science and talents to drive medical innovation. In our Basel location, our colleagues work in the fields of Oncology, Neuroscience and Rare Diseases, Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases, Immunology, Infectious Diseases and Ophthalmology, joined by colleagues from research & clinical operations, research informatics, and our strategy group. Also based in Basel are our development groups which represent the range of expertise needed to run clinical trials, including clinical research and exploratory development, clinical science, safety science, and regulatory affairs. Roche Pharma Research and Early Development Center Basel, our new R&D facilities on the Roche Basel campus, brings our research community under one state-of-the-art roof. The pRED Center comprises two high-rise laboratory buildings with cutting-edge lab and digital solutions, an office building and a convention center, forming a truly one-of-a-kind complex. The workspaces have been designed so that laboratories sit side-by-side with office spaces to maximise science, innovation and collaboration. Together with our other global sites, the pRED Center in Basel will play an important role in supporting Roche’s R&D mission to discover and develop novel, breakthrough medicines that make a lasting difference to patients’ lives worldwide.
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About the PhysChem Forum
We organise regular free-to-attend meetings with a focus on PhysChem in drug development. Our goal is to generate an environment for informed debate and discussion in a non-commercial setting with excellent networking opportunities. We are supported by many "BigPharma" and smaller pharmaceutical development companies through the input of the PhysChem organising committee. To join our exciting meetings please sign up to our e-mail list by dropping an e-mail to "mailshot@physchem.org.uk"