On behalf of the Asian Federation for Medicinal Chemistry (AFMC), I sincerely welcome all of you for attending AIMECS 2021 (AFMC International Medicinal Chemistry Symposium 2021). It is a great pleasure to have AIMECS2021 overcoming difficulties. For the past two years, COVID-19 has restricted our daily activities, making it very difficult to hold face-to-face conferences. After AIMECS2019 held in Istanbul, Turkey, we had started to prepare for AIMECS2021, but the spread of the pandemic has made it difficult to predict the future and plunged people into endless anxiety. The office of the Pharmaceutical Society of Japan had been closed. However, we cannot stop the progress of science.

It was possible to postpone the meeting, but we decide to have AIMECS2021 online. Profs. Motomu Kanai, Munetaka Kunishima and Kazumasa Aoki, and members of local organizing committee devotedly prepared the meeting. I respect them and their activities. Online meetings allow you to connect with people from all over the world without travel costs. Therefore, we are able to invite distinguished researchers and we believe that AIMECS2021 will be the chance for members of AFMC to exchange the latest scientific findings and to promote mutual understandings. AIMECS2021 will be the third meeting held in Japan under the supervision of Dr. Toshihiko Kobayashi, the founder of AFMC.

It is one of good seasons to travel Japan and beautiful autumn leaves fascinate people. It is pity that we cannot welcome you in Japan, but I hope you feel our hospitalities online. I feel sorry I could not do much as the president because of COVID-19. I believe in the success of the well-prepared AIMECS2021 and my role is to pass the success baton to the next president.