By Christopher R. McCurdy, Ph.D., FAAPS, President
One of the moments I have most anticipated since beginning my year as AAPS president is this: Stepping onto the stage at the AAPS PharmSci 360 opening plenary session, looking out over a crowd of thousands of members and guests, and welcoming you to the new meeting. All of us are ready for something new and special to support pharmaceutical scientists!
I have not yet decided what to say, and there is so much to convey. Especially, our Board of Directors’ gratitude and congratulations to everyone on navigating the big changes in our association over the past two years. Those changes began with re-envisioning AAPS and adopting our first strategic plan. We now cross AAPS’ biggest milestone yet with the launch of this new event.
There is much to tell you about everything that is special at PharmSci 360—all the things our volunteer leaders have developed to make this meeting more valuable, and more fun, than any AAPS meeting you have ever been to.
I do want to use this column to tell you about the plenary speakers, the tracks, and the neighborhoods in the Solution Center. One change that will make navigation of the meeting easier this year is the specific icons that represent each of the scientific tracks to guide you to topics of interest, no matter where you are during the conference. We have built an event with the advantages of a 7,000-person conference, but the collegiality and scientific depth of something much more intimate.
It would be easy to talk for 20 minutes just about the scientific tracks. In short, here is the plan: The science of both chemical and biomolecular entities will be evenly covered in their own separate five tracks:
- Preclinical development
- Bioanalytics
- Clinical pharmacology
- Manufacturing and bioprocessing
- Formulation and quality
These tracks have been designed to give this large scientific conference the content depth of a small, focused gathering. Whether you are interested in small molecules, biologicals, or both, we have built these tracks for your needs.
Each track will host scientific symposia in various themes with specialized keynote speakers. But we felt that was not enough, so we added end-to-end topics that cover the entire drug development process in two areas:
- Immuno-oncology: Advancement from Infancy to Products
- Rapid and Cost-effective Delivery of New Drugs to Patients
You can stay focused in your scientific track all week and have a wonderful, intimate experience. Or you can follow one of these end-to-end topics and get a taste of each track while developing a broad understanding of these hot topic issues.
Another exciting element is how each of these tracks will begin daily. Each morning, official programming commences with a 30-minute prologue to each track, outlining the scientific program focus for that day. Participants will spend the rest of the morning either in scientific symposia—choosing either the chemical or biomolecular path—or in one of the end-to-end hot topic sessions. See what sessions address your area of interest in either the chemical or biomolecular track (or both).
The Solution Center opens at 8:30 am each morning, but we have set aside a couple of hours starting at 11 am during which there is limited scientific programming. This will provide you time to discover the new layout of the Solution Center—our exhibiting partners will be divided into neighborhoods that mirror the five program tracks! Each neighborhood will have posters and other areas specifically dedicated to their track. You can see the latest technologies and find scientists and representatives with expertise relating to your field. Chalk Talks, one of the most popular innovations AAPS has brought to its meetings, will return this year, as will the poster forums.
As we recently introduced, posters will be grouped by topic into intimate poster forums. You will see that topics are related to the meeting tracks, so posters will be organized into the appropriate neighborhood of the Solution Center. Each poster forum will have multiple posters geared to a particular topic, so you can easily see what is new in your topic of interest and ask the authors your questions. Authors will be assigned specific screens for a full hour. However, the poster terminals in the forums will not be assigned until 9:30 am, affording you an hour each morning to use any screen to browse the poster catalogue. We will again have digital screens and the Poster Café, where attendees can look up any poster at any time.
At the heart of the Solution Center is our redeveloped Career Development Center, where we will offer education sessions, free LinkedIn profile critiques, and a chance to meet representatives from hiring companies. The Career Development Committee carefully chose the professional development programming to help serve attendees who are in management or moving in that direction. Topics include a Women in Pharmaceutical Sciences Power Hour; a session on how to say, “This isn’t working out”; a discussion about work-life balance; and persuasive speaking skill building. Learn more!
Each afternoon will begin with exciting keynote speakers, followed by a new type of programming: Rapid Fire Presentations. I am personally very excited about the Rapid Fires! Rapid Fires allow scientists to talk about anything—including data that is not ready for publication, big ideas, interesting insights, and even failures. We believe this forum will raise the potential for diverse scientific knowledge exchange, trigger innovation, and promote networking among attendees. Each presentation will last 10 minutes and take questions for three minutes, so I anticipate hearing plenty of new ideas!
For Sunday’s opening plenary session, we have two exciting speakers:
- Craig Venter, Ph.D., cofounder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Human Longevity Inc., which combines the largest database of genomic and phenotypic data with machine learning to drive discoveries and revolutionize the practice of medicine. Venter is one of the scientists behind the game-changing sequencing of the human genome.
- Stephan Grupp, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Cancer Immunotherapy Program, director of Translational Research for the Center for Childhood Cancer Research at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; and medical director of the Stem Cell Laboratory, will talk on The CAR-T Revolution: Opportunities and Challenges. Grupp led the global trial to bring the first engineered cell therapy in human history to the market.
The closing plenary on Wednesday, Nov. 7, will feature Dany De Grave, senior director of Innovation Programs and External Networks at Sanofi Pasteur and founder of Unconventional Innovation. He will talk about artificial intelligence: AI in Pharma: The Future Arrived Yesterday.
Immediately afterwards is the closing reception, where you can mingle with colleagues and discuss the presentations, posters, and Rapid Fires most relevant to your work, and plan for your future contributions to AAPS.
Check out the full program, where you can browse the schedule by track, session type, or keyword; the Solution Center by company, track, booth number, or floorplan; networking activities by philanthropy, reception, affiliate event, or community social; or speakers.
I will have one more thing to say on the stage Sunday, Nov. 3, before I hand it over to Drs. Venter and Grupp: I want to tell you to how grateful I am for the opportunity you gave me to lead the organization through this process. Thank you for all your work and all your support.
I look forward to seeing you in Washington, D.C.!