Editorial

Dear Colleagues,

We are excited to be able to bring back to the Midwest, the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Pharmacognosy for 2013 and welcome all of our natural product scientists to a wonderful venue titled “Natural Products at a Crossroad: Current and Future Directions.” The central location of Saint Louis, Missouri, makes for an easy commute from numerous large metropolitan United States cities, as well as Mexico and South America. The lure of the United States and our natural products society, the ASP, also is drawing scientists from Asia and Southeast Asia. The Organizing Committee is proud to be the host for this year's venue.

For the scientific program, we have put together a diverse collection of plenary lectures and sessions. This meeting's plenary lectures will highlight remarkable successes involved in natural product synthesis, recently commercialized drugs inspired from natural products, and a one-of-a-kind perspective of the evolution of NMR over the last 70 years. Several noteworthy sessions include new anticancer therapeutics derived from natural products and natural products enhancing the experience of pet foods. Covered scientific foci include Natural Products: Drug Research and Current Drugs on the Market, Application of Natural Products for Pet Foods, Chemistry, Biology, and Ecology of Marine Natural Products, Botanicals: The Road to the Clinic, Natural Products as Anti-Cancer Agents, Ethnobotany and Botanical Discovery, Spectroscopic Techniques in Natural Products Chemistry, Frontiers of Discovery through Spectroscopy and Botanicals and Foods.

The contributions of numerous scientists from our community should be recognized for their hard work in creating three exciting Saturday Workshops, “Omics,” NMR Techniques,” and “Microbiology.” These workshops continue to be excellent opportunities for our younger members to learn from seasoned veterans in natural product chemistry and biology. Also, the Younger Members Meeting continues to be a popular venue for networking and scientific socializing as evident by the near sell out crowd.

We would like to thank all of the members of the Local and Scientific Organizing Committees for their contributions in creating a wonderful scientific experience for our natural product colleagues. We would like to extend a very special thank you to the GA and their scientific journal publishing partner for printing the abstracts again this year. It has been a very special working relationship and a collaboration that we hope will foster a global integration of natural product science. Thank you for joining us in the Midwest and “meeting us in Saint Louis!”

Ray Cooper

Chair, Local Organizing Committee

Mark O'Neil-Johnson

Chair, Scientific Organizing Committee