It is an umbrella organization of currently 29 national societies for pharmacology and represents over 12,000 individual pharmacologists in Europe.
One of those scientific federations is EPHAR that was founded at the XIth International Congress of Pharmacology in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) in 1990.
The establishment of the federation was prepared by a steering committee formed in 1988 under the initiative of Rodolfo Paoletti.
The steering committee, headed by Börje Uvnäs, consisted of six members: Alasdair Breckenridge (UK), Flaminio Cattabeni (Italy), Gilles Fillion (France), Ove A. Nedergaard (Denmark), Rodolfo Paoletti (Italy), Hasso Scholz (Germany), Börje Uvnäs (Sweden).
[4] The necessity of collaborative efforts within all branches of biological sciences, in the development and analysis of new drugs, is the driving force of the activities of EPHAR.
One challenge of this federation is the creation of new generations of pharmacologists with an analytical and broadminded attitude towards important aspects of modern medical biological sciences.
[5] The Federation seeks to achieve its objects by arranging instructional courses and training programs in matters connected with pharmacology, facilitating the exchange of scientific information between European pharmacologists (by encouraging the holding of joint meetings between European member societies), disseminating information and encouraging the participation to important activities organized by member societies.
This will include the production of a calendar of the National and joint meetings of each European Society.
The scientific dissemination is a fundamental step in progress and advance in research and education.
For this reason, the most important scientific events established by the Federation are the EPHAR Congresses.
They include plenary lectures, symposia, round tables, oral and poster communications devoted to the most recent advances in pharmacology and related sciences and therefore represented the adequate forum for discussing preclinical, clinical and therapeutic data.
Particular emphasis was given to the impact of biotechnologies on drug development and to the identification of novel pharmacological approaches to incurable diseases.
Sessions were also held on drug development, strategies for research funding and training of pharmacologists.
Calls for applications for these EPHAR-supported activities and the guidelines for these events are announced annually.
The present (2022–2026) Executive Committee is composed by the following members:[6] Past Presidents were: The National Societies members of EPHAR are (in alphabetical order): • Austrian Pharmacological Society (Österreichische Pharmakologische Gesellschaft) APHAR.
Nederlands Vereniging voor Farmacologie (NVF) • Finnish Pharmacological Society.
Српско Фармаколошко Друштво / Srpsko Farmakološko Društvo (СФД / SFD).