Bioconjugate chemistry, a field of research involving the covalent attachment of small molecules to biopolymers, an area of growing multidisciplinary interest among chemists, biochemists, and molecular biologists. Recent advances in bioconjugate chemistry and the advent of a new American Chemical Society Bioconjugate Chemistry , scheduled for startup next January, were dual focuses of a Division of Medicinal Chemistry symposium at the ACS national meeting last month in Dallas. symposium addressed bioconjugate chemistry applications in tumor therapeutics, DNA probes, diagnostic reagents, synthetic vaccines, and other areas. The central theme of the new journal, says editor Claude F. Meares, professor of chemistry at the University of California, Davis, is the joining of two different molecular functions by either cal or biological means, principally chemical. This amounts to conjugation of a molecule with useful properties, like a drug, radionuclide, toxin, or fluorophore, with a biologi...