Presentation

Dear Colleagues,

It is a great pleasure to invite you to the 43rd National Congress of the Italian Society of Pharmacology, which will take place from November 13th to 16th, 2026 in Turin.

A national congress serves to present ourselves, to imagine the future together, and to bring together professionals with similar backgrounds, and the Turin congress aims to embrace all three of these challenges.

First, ample space will be given to the research of members and Italian colleagues. Unlike in previous years, however, there will be important changes. The traditional oral communications have been converted into single-topic symposia organized exclusively by members under 38. In the traditional symposia, an effort has instead been made, as much as possible, to bring together content ranging from basic to clinical research. Indeed, while a good researcher in any discipline is measured by their ability to answer relevant scientific questions and thus push the boundaries of knowledge, a pharmacologist must also be measured by their ability to move transversally across all areas of drug development, from target identification to market access dynamics, through preclinical and non-clinical research, clinical research, evidence evaluation, and regulatory disciplines.

Secondly, the congress aims to reflect the golden age we are experiencing. Drugs are being developed much more rapidly than in the past, we are developing a significantly higher number of them, and the available technologies have increased substantially. It is evident that this new wealth is accompanied by increased complexity at every level and therefore by the need for significant changes. Proximity of care, system sustainability, telemedicine, translational medicine, precision medicine, prevention, and artificial intelligence are no longer slogans but are becoming tools to face the future. In this context, the role of the pharmacologist is central, not because of specific knowledge in a given field, but because of the transversal nature that characterizes this figure and that can bring value to the system. The congress will therefore also address many of the key cross-cutting themes at the heart of current discussions, from high-quality basic research to new tools in clinical research, from real-world evidence to regulatory uncertainties, from evidence-based medicine to the personalization of therapies, including gender pharmacology, and from economic sustainability to organizational innovation.

Finally, a national congress also serves as an opportunity to bring together professionals with shared interests. From this perspective, I primarily hope that this congress will attract colleagues from academia, the public sector, and the private sector, and that this will generate fruitful discussion. The congress will also provide structured opportunities for networking for colleagues in training, for pharmacologists who represent the discipline in Ethics Committees, in Phase I Units, and in tumor molecular boards, as well as for those who have joined the SIF sections.

I look forward to welcoming you in Turin,

Armando Genazzani

SIF President