Welcome

It is indeed a pleasure to welcome you, on behalf of Pfizer Central Research, to the fifth in the series of Biomedical Research Symposia held in Groton at Branford House on the campus of the University of Connecticut at Avery Point. My colleagues join me in expressing deep appreciation to each of our guests for having taken time from busy schedules to come here, often from considerable distances, to join us for these discussions on Therapeutic Progress in Cannabinoid Research. This series of Biomedical Research Symposia was instituted almost three years ago, in November of 1977. By intent, we select for discussion areas of research where new knowledge emerging from either laboratory or clinic seems likely to spawn important advances in therapeutics over the near future. Topics of previous symposia have ranged from aspects of diabetes and immunology to new drugs for the treatment of congestive heart failure. And judging from the level of participant interest in the present session, it would appear that the subject is a timely choice indeed. This will be substantially the largest symposium in our series to date. It involves the largest number of participants, the greatest number of papers, the first poster session ever to be held in the series, and the most speakers and participants from countries other than the United States. Few families of therapeutics are as complex as the cannabinoids. Drugs that act upon the central nervous system rarely yield their secrets easily, and the cannabinoids are proving to be no exception. Designing meaningful experiments with these agents in animals and making valid measurements of their effects in man are both extremely difficult tasks. Even the law presents unusual complications in this field. Most recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia instructed the Federal Government to reconsider once again its regulations governing the medical uses of marihuana and its constituents. What better reminder that in these times, no other field of science feels the constraining influence of law and regulation as substantially as the area of drug research. The process of validating a new drug discovery, which of course involves human experimentation, has now become so cumbersome, and the process of obtaining meaningful feedback from clinic to laboratory has become so prolonged, that our profession senses a critical need for more effective means of communicating complex information between those in the research laboratory and their colleagues in clinical investigation. We seek to meet that strongly felt need through symposia such as this one. Hopefully, guest scientists and Pfizer staff alike will find these sessions informative and useful. In closing, let me add a special word of welcome to our guests from other countries. Pfizer Central Research is itself an international organization. More than 40 per cent of our staff are located overseas at research laboratories in England, France, and Japan, as well as in European clinical offices in Sandwich, Paris, Munich, Brussels, and Copenhagen. It is a particular pleasure to have with us as our guests such a large number of scientists from other parts of the world, as well as several of our Pfizer colleagues from the aforementioned overseas locations. We hope that each of you will find your long journey to Groton to have been worthwhile.