The purpose of this broad and multidisciplinary meeting is to explore the major challenges in drug discovery and development where innovation in computational approaches and tools can really make a significant contribution towards providing solutions. You should attend this conference if you are developing or using computational approaches to therapeutics development, or if you are a key decision maker in a pharmaceutical or biotechnology company. Each of the five sessions, which progress from identifying disease mechanisms to implementing new therapeutic and diagnostic approaches in the clinic, will bring together experts in both the biomedical and the computational aspects of the topic under discussion. The scientific programme is chaired by Janet Thornton (EBI), Simon Campbell (Royal Society of Chemistry) and Jim Wells (University of California San Francisco).