The International Symposium on Prostaglandins and Related Compounds, first held in Vienna 1972, revisited the city after 24 years for the 10TH Symposium. For the many re searchers working in this multi-disciplinary field it was an opportunity to exchange their ex periences and share new data with colleagues from all around the world. This scientific exchange was largely encouraged by the unseasonably cold and rainy weather. For the first time, there was quite a large attendance from the former Communist countries. Eugene Garfield prepared a key note address delivered during the meeting (The Sci entist 1996, 12) reviewing the contribution of the Nobel Laureates U.S. von Euler, l.R. Vane, S.K. Bergstrom, and B.I. Samuelsson, discussing the relevance of the more than 40,000 pa pers in this area published since 1991. Overall, there is still a rapidly growing interest, and in particular a great variety of clinical applications of this family of compounds which were dis cussed in detail during the meeting. Beside the lectures there were 19 workshops covering nearly all the topics of key in terest. All the speakers were invited to prepare a manuscript which has resulted in the volume now in your hands. Special thanks to Dr. Patrick Wong and the new publisher of this series who helped to publish the proceedings in the usual quality and reasonable period of time. Looking forward to seeing all of you again in Florence in 1999, hopefully with much more sun.

This volume is the proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Advances in Prostaglandin and Leukotriene Research: Basic Science and New Clinical Applications, held in Florence, Italy, on June 4-8, 2000, which continues the tradition of covering both basic and clinical aspects of prostaglandin and leukotriene research. At this meeting particular emphasis was given to the potential application of the novel COX-2 inhibitors, the genetics of asthma relating to the production of leukotrienes, and novel cellular networks for the production of leukotrienes and lipoxins. Traditionally, as has been done in past meetings of this series, a considerable amount of new material was presented and discussed this year, with particular attention given to the newest clinical data.