This new A3 Foresight Program was approved by each Agency of Japan, China and Korea early in July 2016. Soon after, the first meeting was prepared to be held in Fukuoka in September 2016. In spite of a short preparation time, 22 Koreans, 22 Chinese, 30 Japanese and one guest American chemists assembled, who presented and discussed their excellent research results on chemical probes during 3 days. The characteristic feature of this new A3 program is that the development of new chemical probes is approached from a variety of fields including nucleic acids, natural products and chemical biology, etc. All attendees had better friendship also outside the lecture room over meal. In this context, this first A3 roundtable meeting was very fruitful as an initiation to build up a research hub on chemical probe. The meeting was closed by an announcement of the next meeting to be held in China in 2017.

A scene of the meeting

Group photo of all participants