MOST NOTABLE PAPERS IN THE 2018 BIANNUAL METALS IN MEDICINE GORDON RESEARCH CONFERENCE

All accounts mentioned in this paper are for and from published data only and are referenced at the end of the report. Metals in Medicine Gordon Research Conference (GRC) started in 2002 with the effort of Professor Michael J. Clark and his collaborators and it has been held biannually since then. The most recent conference was held in Proctor Academy in Andover, NH USA. We are writing this Conference Report about its most recent and vibrant activities that occurred between June 24th, and June 29th, 2018. After an immensely productive week and with a prolific number of presentations in different subfields of metals and their involvement in medicinal diagnostics and treatments, the conference met all of its objectives, one of which was that very valuable agreements for future collaborations with at least two international researchers with knowledge of Molecular Dynamics, Density Function Theory, and Molecular Mechanics Calculations have been gained. The conference had its highest number of participants and attendees since its inception. There were 50 talks and 120 poster presentations. This report is being submitted in celebration of the 85th birth year of Professor Mostafa A. El-Sayed of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Institute of Technology.


From Chemistry to Clinic
Under this subtitle, the three authors for that night gathering (Chad A. Mirkin, David Puerta, and Christine Brennan) made the connections between the real-life application of academic bench top research and how they were able to transform it into clinical applications. Professor Mirkin's talk was entitled "Ushering in the Digital Drug Design Revolution with Spherical Nucleic Acid Nanoparticle Conjugates" [16]. Dr. David Puerta of Forge Therapeutics, USA presented a talk entitled "Forge Therapeutics: Bioinorganic Directed Drug Discovery" [17]. Dr. Christine Brennan of MRL Ventures Fund, USA, presented a talk entitled "From Discovery to Company Formation: Views from a Venture Capital Investor".

Recent Development in Metallodrugs
Professor Johnathan Sessler of the University of Texas at Austin presented an entertaining, as well as very informative talk entitled "Gadolinum Texaphrins, Platinum and Gold" [18]. In this talk, he showed innovative ways of synthesis metal-containing-macromolecules. Sessler's talk was followed by a presentation by professor Valentina Gandin of the University of Padova, Italy entitled "Copper Complexes as Anticancer Agents: New Mechanistic Insights" [19]. James McKerrow of the University of California, San Diego presented a talk entitled "A Metal-Containing Drug Repurposed for Neglected Tropical Diseases", which was followed by Celine Marmion of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland who presented a talk entitled "Innovative Metallo-Prodrug Strategies Leading to Multimodal Cancer Therapeutics" [20]. The Metallo-Nano-Biomedicine theme within the GRC-Metals in Medicine was overwhelming during the last few GRC meetings. I will mention the most notable ones. During the presentation entitled "Photothermal Effects of Gold Nanoparticles for Therapeutic Applications" by Professor Mostafa A. El-Sayed during the 2014 GRC meeting was a great example [21,22].

Metalloglycomics
This subsection started with a very good talk by Katelyn Arnold and ended with an excellent talk by Nicholas Farrell. Katelyn Arnold of Eshelman School of Pharmacy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA presented a talk entitled "Using Synthetic Heparan Sulfate to Treat Acute Liver Injury". The second talk was given by Professor Mauro Pavao of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His talk was entitled "Manganese and Glycosaminoglycans in Tumor Progression: From Cell Migration to Premetastatic Niche Formation" [23]. The last talk in this section was by Professor Nicholas P. Farrell which was entitled "Glycans as Ligands in Bioinorganic Chemistry: Chemical and Biological Studies in Metalloglycomics" [24].

New Agents for Imaging Applications
For the imaging research applications, Professor Roger Alberto of the University of Zurich, Switzerland presented a detailed talk entitled "Technetium and Rhenium Complexes with Aromatic Hydrocarbons as π-Ligands: An Entry into Biomimetic Imaging" [25]. The next presentation in this series was by Professor Carolyn J. Anderson of the University of Pittsburgh, USA. The talk was entitled "How Chelator Choice Impacts Bio-distribution of Radio-metal-Labeled Biomolecules. Her talk was in line with the work of the late professor Michael J. Welch of Washington University in St. Louis [26]. Next, Dr. Jun-Long Zhang of Peking University, China, presented an informative and a rich talk entitled "From Cell Imaging to Predrug: The Renaissance of Metallosalens in Biological Applications" [27]. The final talk in this series was presented by Professor Bengang Xing of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. His

Case Studies in Translational Research
The evening of that day of the conference was hosted by Nicholas P. Farrell at which three presentations were given by researchers form the same research complex in the city of Vienna. The first was presented by Dr. Walter Berger of the Medical University of Vienna, Austria. His talk was entitled "Once upon a Time in Vienna: A Story from Ruthenium to Platinum" [29]. Dr. Berger's talk was followed by his colleague Dr. Christian Kowol of the University of Vienna, Austria, in which she also presented a talk with similar title "Once upon a Time in Vienna: The Power of Activation by Reduction" [30]. The last talk in this mini-series was a presentation by Professor Petra Heffeter in the same research group. The talk was entitled "Once upon a Time in Vienna: Tumor-Specific Accumulation of Metallodrugs" [31].

Analytical Techniques for Metals in Biological Systems
At the end of the conference, a series of presentations on the use of different analytical tools was presented. Under this analytical tools mini-series, Professor Victoria DeRose of the University of Oregon, USA presented a talk entitled "Methods for Comprehensive Analysis of Platinum Targets in Yeast and Mammalian Cancer Cells" [32]. Dr. DeRose talk was followed by a presentation by Professor Peter Lay, a chromium biochemistry expert of The University of Sydney, Australia, that was entitled "Metal Speciation in In Vitro and In Vivo Biological Activities from Drugs to Toxins" [33]. From Dr. Lay's talk and Dr. Crans' talks given in above, I concluded that the bioinorganic chemistry of vanadium which was once known to have potential diabetes treating effects, is being resurrected for cancer treatment [13,32]. Following Dr. Lay's presentation, Dr. Ryszard Lobinski of the CNRS, France presented a talk entitled "Global Approaches to Metal Speciation: Metallomics" [34]. The last presentation in this analytical tools mini-series was by Professor Samuel Meier-Menches of the University of Vienna, Austria. His talk was entitled "Emerging Proteomics Methods to Elucidate Metallodrugs' Mechanisms of Action in the Cellular Context" [35].
The last set of presentations was reserved for "Young Investigators". Dr. Loi Do of the University of Houston, USA presented a talk entitled "Therapeutic SIMCats: In Pursuit of Catalytic Medicines" [36]. Dr. Do's talk was followed by a presentation by Dr. Bo Li of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. Her talk was entitled "Metal-Chelating Antibiotics and Natural Products" [37]. The next presentation was by Dr. Anthony Grillo of the University of Washington school of Medicine, USA. His talk was entitled "A Small Molecule that Transports Iron Promotes Iron Absorption and Hemoglobinization". The final talk in the young investigators mini-series was by Justin Wilson of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Cornell University. His talk was entitled "Rhenium(I) Complexes as Anticancer Agents: Challenges and Opportunities" [38].

Conclusions and Recommendations
Metals in Medicine Gordon Research Conference are certainly a conference in which the bioinorganic and medicinal readers of "Inorganics" are very interested. It is worth mentioning that during the last few Metals in Medicine GRC meetings, there was a great interest from senior faculty members of the meeting to foster young investigators' presentations. The most recent meeting had its highest number of participants and attendees since its inception. There were 50 oral presentations and 120 poster presentations. Also, the shift of the use of low molecular agent metal-containing therapeutic agents was widespread. Furthermore, chemists who have no experience with bio-related techniques (myself included) [39], such as the Kaplan-Meier Survival curves of living rodents, were eye opening. We also have learned that cancerous cells survive and flourish under conditions which 1-have high acidity, 2-high temperature environment, and 3-that are high in glutathione concentrations. We highly recommend conference loving attendees not to miss the next GRC in their area of expertise.