Dear AAPS members–
The gene editing tool CRISPr-Cas 9 is on my mind this week, especially after watching Nova's fascinating new documentary Human Nature featuring our distinguished PharmSci 360 plenary speaker Dr. Jennifer Doudna. After hearing how she, like other scientists, has wrestled with the potential of gene-editing, I am even more excited to hear what she shares with us in October. It reminded me to check out the main conference program AND the workshops. We have an entire workshop dedicated to gene therapy!
Gene therapy is also a topic of active discussion in our AAPS Communities. To that end, I want to give a shout-out to the Biomarker and Precision Medicine Community for hosting an interesting open scientific discussion on Biomarker Strategy for Gene Therapy Trials: From Patient Enrollment to Surrogate Endpoint this week.
Meanwhile, the pages of my notebook are rapidly filling with notes on poster abstracts that interest me-with over 800 posters at our meeting on so many exciting topics, I will be busy! I do look forward to the Special Poster Collections that will be hosted by more than a dozen of our AAPS scientific leaders at the meeting. There was a lot of discussion about that this week, and the energy and anticipation evident in those conversations made me happy because it tells me that our leaders look forward to great conversations with the poster authors as much as I do.
If you are a first-time poster author and presenter, and you are a bit worried about how this is going to go or how you are going to present your work, especially in this year's virtual format, let me reassure you that 1) Every scientist was nervous when they presented their first poster, and 2) scientists love to talk to poster authors! You may also draw some encouragement from a recording of @Stacey Tannenbaum's excellent (fun!) webinar Making the Moster of Your Poster, where she shares a wealth of tips and tricks for designing your poster, engaging your audience, and having great dialogue about your work. On a personal note, it made me feel better to learn that I am not the only person who still has a (proud) photograph of that first paper-on-cardboard poster from graduate school that took so long to put together. (Who else remembers Letraset for labeling those gel images??) By comparison, today's digital posters are a breeze to assemble and really help you highlight the most important parts of your research.
If you share my excitement about the great scientific content at our conferences, you may want to consider volunteering for the Scientific Programming Committee for one of our 2021 meetings. @Meena Subramanyam is looking for collaborators to program the 2021 National Biotechnology Conference (deadline to apply is Friday, September 11) and @Mark Arnold is hoping that you will help him with next year's PharmSci 360 meeting (deadline to apply is Monday, September 21).
If you have an extra 15 minutes this weekend to spend on an interesting experiment, please consider participating in the study that our colleagues from University College Dublin are conducting on Decision Making in Drug Development. They have had a terrific response from our members, but they still would like to get a few additional data points. They have kept the study window open a bit longer so that AAPS members in the biotechnology and pharmacology sectors can take part in the online experiment. Respondents will be presented with information about several hypothetical drug development projects and then asked to make decisions regarding the projects' viability. The experiment will take 10 to 15 minutes. Participation in the research is completely voluntary and anonymous-no information that can be used to identify the participants will be requested or recorded at any point during the experiment.
Even as the days get shorter with the beginning of fall, the list of great science to engage in at AAPS keeps getting longer-so as always: let our science inspire you to look up and ahead!
Tina
Share your thoughts with Tina via the AAPS Community!