Dear AAPS members–
It seems counter-intuitive to think about long-term plans at a time when even our simplest and shortest-range scheduling (summer vacation, anyone?) has been upended. As one of our staff recently said, "I miss being able to just run to Target."
There are some things we do know about the future, though. AAPS will continue advancing the science, and that both guides our professional lives day to day and requires AAPS leadership and myself to look to the future and plan.
When I look forward, I see a future that has promise for us, both as scientists and as members. Right now, the Board of Directors and our staff team are re-imaging the delivery of PharmSci 360 and thinking about how we can best bring you the fullest and richest scientific experience of your year, despite the impact of COVID-19 on travel, personal interactions, shared spaces, gatherings of large groups, and, importantly, how we feel about it all. We're going to bring you a meeting where you can experience all the science regardless of where you are!
To that end, if you can give us a few moments of your time, please complete a short survey to help us understand your preferences around PharmSci 360. Your answers will really help us plan!
In the immediate future, I can share the exciting news that our workshop, COVID-19 – Current Pharmaceutical Developments for Cures and Prevention, generated so much scientific discussion and interest that we are working on another set of sessions for June! Mark your calendar for the week of June 29. We'll release an agenda soon. This event will continue to be members-only, so make plans to join or renew if you want to participate.
Sessions will focus on COVID-19 testing and assay performance, specifically looking at this issue with both the lenses of the clinical and bioanalytical communities and analyzing how existing challenges can be overcome. The great importance of COVID-19 testing was really driven home to me by Dr. Janet Lin's presentation on Tuesday, during week two of our COVID-19 workshop. Dr. Lin offered a physician's frontline perspective and discussed how patient care decisions primarily depend on understanding the patient's disease state through accurate assay data. It does not get any more important than that!
Week two of the workshop ended with a discussion expanding our consideration of the ripple effects of a pandemic that may directly affect what is happening with manufacturing and supply chains. I suspect that conversations about business continuity during a pandemic, as well as response to other unforeseen disasters, will have a much higher sense of urgency after 2020. At the same time, new analysis of available data about where and how medicines are made can point to the targeted use of innovative and efficient manufacturing approaches, such as continuous manufacturing, for essential medicines and to avoid shortages. It was fascinating to learn how USP is mining their data on the use of reference standards to understand manufacturing trends while at the same time supporting advanced continuous manufacturing approaches, like the ones discussed by Frank Gupton from VCU's Medicines for All Institute, that will require a completely different thinking about quality standards. I look forward to following this collaborative dialogue in the future.
If you find the amount of COVID-related news and science overwhelming, please remember that AAPS offers so much other science every day! During my lunch break on Thursday, I tuned into AAPS Founder and Past President @Leslie Benet's excellent webinar lecture Clearance Is Driven by Exposure and Is Always Model Dependent. This is an area where I have a lot to learn, having spent most of my laboratory career in a completely different scientific arena. If you missed it don't worry-it will appear in the webinar archive soon.
You may also want to mark your calendars for AAPS' next virtual event, AAPS Career Planning Workshop: Navigating the Job Market Today. Running June 1–4, this event includes 3 sessions led by career experts, including a session delivered by our friends at the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) who will address academic job searches in particular. There will also be one of AAPS' popular Ask Me Anything sessions-this one is hosted by a group of members who want to talk about "Career Options for Mid-Level Scientists after Company Restructuring and Layoffs." Thank you, @Maggie McMullen and the members of the Career Development Committee for putting together this fantastic program!
Next week, governance will be on my mind, as our Board of Directors will meet virtually for two days on Monday and Tuesday. But for you, my friends, next week is the early poster abstract deadline and the abstract screener application deadline for PharmSci 360-please don't forget to submit your research!
I know it's difficult to plan right now-but I hope you'll join me in preparing for all that AAPS has in store.
Tina
Share your thoughts with Tina via the AAPS Community!