Dear AAPS members–
As January is winding down, activity at AAPS is ramping up! We are working on a lot of projects, including upgrades and installations that are necessary to make your interactions with us smoother, safer, and generally more pleasant. Many thanks to IT Director @Sherry Martin and AAPS' Membership Department for working hard to improve efficiency and user experience!
It's because of one of these projects that I need to ask you a small favor: please do not try to log in at www.aaps.org next Wednesday and Thursday, January 27 and 28. You will also find a reminder in your inbox about this next week.
You may not realize all the members-only materials to which your login grants you access, including special content in AAPS Newsmagazine, our webinar archive, our salary survey, and the AAPS Communities. If you are planning to renew your membership or register for an AAPS event-anything that requires you to log in with your membership credentials-please plan around next Wednesday and Thursday.
I was excited to see that more than 400 of you found time to register for and participate in this week's workshop, COVID-19: Immunogenicity in the Time of COVID, the 4th installment in our ongoing, members-only, virtual event. What a great turnout for our first virtual workshop of the year! This installment of the series resonated with me personally: while I have spent significant time during my scientific career working on analytical approaches that help characterize quality attributes of protein therapeutics to avoid unwanted immunogenicity, I will be the first to admit that I had not even considered, yet, what would happen in response to these therapeutics if patients were infected with COVID-19 prior or concurrent to therapy with biologics, including for non-COVID-19-related diseases. These patients can fail to respond to therapy because of COVID-19-induced dysregulated immunogenicity. An augmented immune response can neutralize the biotherapeutic and loss of efficacy with debilitating outcomes in many cases, including oncology and lifesaving enzyme replacement therapies. The effects of the changed immune state in COVID-19 patients on the immunogenicity to these biotherapeutic remains uncertain. Considering how widely established biotherapeutics have become in the medicinal arsenal to combat a variety of diseases, this is very troubling and a huge challenge for science! It was wonderful to see all the great work already going on in this space, reflected by a fantastic line-up of speakers from academia, industry, and FDA. As with the previous installments of this workshop series, if you are an AAPS member and missed the live event, you can still catch the recording later in our eLearning library for FREE.
Your AAPS volunteer leaders on the Board of Directors have been busy as well, having just concluded their first meeting of the new year. Among their actions at the meeting, the Board approved the charge for the formation of an AAPS Scientific Advisory Committee. The charges approved this week are the result of much discussion and consideration about how an advisory committee can assist the Board in achieving the goals outlined in the new strategic plan. The Board acted on Wednesday, so we have not yet posted any information about the new committee to www.aaps.org. We will soon! Watch your email for a call for volunteers and nominations for this committee.
A couple of immediate input requests to keep you busy this weekend: the PharmSci 360 Scientific Programming Committee is still looking for your opinions on the themes for this year's meeting. You have a few more days to weigh in! Here are the links again:
Discovery and Basic Research Track
Preclinical Development Track
Bioanalytics Track
Clinical Pharmacology Track
Manufacturing and Analytical Characterization Track
Formulation and Delivery Track
Also, February 24 is the deadline for submitting your abstract to this May's National Biotechnology Conference (NBC). Don't miss out on this great opportunity to present your research!
With so much going on here at AAPS, I hope you continue to let our science inspire you to look up and ahead.
Tina
Share your thoughts with Tina via the AAPS Community!