The Ciba Foundation's biomedical symposia, which began in 1950, were scientifically influential but were special in other ways too. Thirty or so scientists would gather at 41 Portland Place, part of a beautiful eighteenth-century mews in central London, to spend three intense days discussing a cutting-edge theme, eating formally together in the antique-strewn dining room, and sleeping in overheated bedrooms that cannot be locked from the outside — gentlefolk, after all, don't steal.

Non-British delegates would be bemused by the crazy plumbing and disconcerted by how loudly the undulating floorboards creaked. But all were charmed. Many Nobel laureates have acknowledged the intellectual stimulation of the meetings. Ulf von Euler, for example, said that his ideas of how neurotransmitters are stored and released were stimulated by the foundation's meeting on adrenergic mechanisms in 1960. In contrast, Arvid Carlsson was devastated when the same colleagues rejected his notion — which won him the 2000 Nobel prize — that dopamine was a neurotransmitter in the brain. A reputation could stand or fall on the consensus of a Ciba Foundation meeting.

Time moves on. The Swiss pharmaceutical company Ciba-Geigy was merged into Novartis in the mid-1990s, and the foundation was duly renamed. In 2002, when the foundation's sponsor moved its R&D centre from Basel to Boston, it decided that this old-fashioned, eccentric elegance did not fit its style of conference support (see page 233).

That was a blinkered decision, given the strong links that the pharmaceutical industry needs with the academic community. True, corporate sponsorship has got tougher, with shareholders demanding much greater, and more immediate, accountability. Nevertheless, Novartis should have negotiated more sympathetically with the foundation to explore new approaches. It is easier to destroy an organization with a strong reputation and institutional knowledge than to build one up from scratch.

But the foundation must shoulder blame too. Although it maintained the quality of its meetings, it made no noticeable acknowledgement that the conference game has changed. Its paper-based approach to publication seemed increasingly quaint, for example. Furthermore, the foundation's trustees and directors should have put up a stronger and more public fight for its life. Their decision to work discreetly on the basis of contacts rather than embark on an 'undignified' campaign to find a new sponsor was almost certainly wrong. Be that as it may, the Novartis Foundation is set to be dissolved at the end of next month, having had 15 months to wind things up.

But it is not necessarily curtains for 41 Portland Place. The likely new tenant, the Academy of Medical Sciences, may still be persuaded to continue the international meetings if the right sponsor were to emerge. Such a rescuer might be institutional, as was happily found last year by the similarly small and intense Berlin-based Dahlem Conferences, saved by the newly created Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies. Or there may be an enlightened wealthy individual willing to foster top-level scientific brainstorming and debate.

Any offers?