By Tina Morris, Ph.D., AAPS Executive Director
Dear AAPS members –
At the end of an extremely rich intellectual week filled with more scientific topics than hours in the day, remarks that Professor Andrew Lo made in our Executive Session at the National Biotechnology Conference (NBC) on Monday keep popping to the forefront of my mind.
This session explored the developability of novel medicines. As a finance expert, Professor Lo discussed the challenges funding and investment experts face when assessing drug candidates. One key challenge for us, the pharmaceutical scientists, is that by training and professional necessity, our fields take us deeply and narrowly into a specific area of science that supports the development of a particular modality. He postulated that the number of pharmaceutical decision makers who have greater interdisciplinary knowledge and training, including business training, is too small. Professor Lo believes that bringing more scientists together earlier not just across "our" disciplines but also connecting them with the business side of our field, would have a significant and positive impact on the fundability of innovative medicines.
Hearing that made me feel very good about AAPS, because being a convener for our field is at the heart of our mission. Despite the early hour for that session, it was quite packed. Clearly, our sessions where business meets science deeply resonate with you, perhaps especially in these disruptive times. If I have made you curious about Professor Lo, catch his closing plenary, as soon as we have it available on science360.aaps.org.
If you're coming out of the NBC energized and do not want to lose momentum in your scientific learning, we have you virtually covered! I am looking forward to next week's workshop, Beyond GLP-1s: Where the Science will Take Business Next, that explores the interface between science and business for one of the most important sets of indications in drug development at the moment. Register now for this excellent program that will run for four sessions on May 13-14.
My notebook is full of scribbles from the NBC about liposome-based drug delivery, so if you're like me, don't let that thread linger! Join moderator @Mitra Mosharraf (nice seeing you in Boston, Mitra!) and speaker @Francis Szoka for the webinar, Liposomes- from the Laboratory to the Clinic, on Thursday, May 15.
If you are on your way home from the NBC and still buzzing from all the great conversations and connections running through your brain, consider pouring that energy into participating on the team that will help put next year's meeting together. You have until May 30 to submit an application for 2026 NBC Scientific Programming Committee. Don't miss out on this great opportunity to shape our extremely forward-looking meeting.
It never fails to amaze me how the ability to bring all of you together from all the different disciplines of our field accelerates our field and I hope you let our science inspire you to look up and ahead.
Tina