The 6th World Meeting on Pharmaceutics, Biopharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Technology (PBP Meeting) April 7–10, 2008, Barcelona, Spain

Abstract

The APV (German “International Association for Pharmaceutical Technology”) and the APGI (French “Association for Industrial Pharmaceutical Technology”) jointly sponsored the 6th World Meeting on Pharmaceutics, Biopharmaceutics, and Pharmaceutical Technology (PBP Meeting) in Barcelona, Spain on April 7–10, 2008. Sixteen other pharmaceutical and engineering societies participated in this event. Although this meeting focuses on the fields of Pharmaceutics, Biopharmaceutics, and Pharmaceutical Technology, the biannual World Meeting has become the most important pharmaceutical sciences congress in Europe. Nearly 1,400 participants from more than 50 countries met to discuss the latest developments. The slogan of this World Meeting was “Industry Meets Academia and Authorities: Shared Research for Scientific Progress.” The scientific program consisted of five plenary lectures, five symposia with invited speakers, more than 60 short oral presentations, and 900 poster presentations. Value added programming for participants consisted of an industrial exhibition and social events. The opening lecture, “Generics—making more for less” by Dr. Andreas Rummelt, CEO of Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, provided an overview of the challenges and possibilities for generic drug products from an industrial perspective. Specifically, Dr. Rummelt explained how generic products profit from advanced dosage forms, and how the relevance of generic products differs from country to country. This excellent lecture also detailed the future perspectives of generic products for small and large molecules, and set the stage for many symposia such as this, on biosimilars. The prestigious Maurice Janot Award Lecture by Professor Patrick Couvreur, University de Paris-Sud, France provided an overview of his research, aimed at intelligent design of nanomedicines for treatment of complex diseases. Professor Chris Porter, of Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, gave a plenary lecture on the role of lipid transport pathways in drug absorption and emerging concepts in this area. Biopharmaceutical aspects of increasing oral bioavailability were the focus of a lecture by Professor Jennifer B. Dressman of Goethe-University, Frankfurt, Germany. She reported on progress in the development of biorelevant dissolution media to provide a better correlation between in vitro and in vivo dissolution behavior of oral dosage forms. Professor Daan Crommelin, of Utrecht University, The Netherlands, gave a stimulating overview on the most recent developments in the area of Biotechnology and future trends. He critically summarized the current status and achievements of the field, noting the perspectives are manifold. He put the developments into the context of future public health. Invited speaker symposia topics were “Quality by Design and PAT,” “Formulation of Poorly soluble Drugs,” “Biosimilars,” “Pre-formulation and New Excipients,” and “Polymorphism and Amorphous Systems”. Many oral and poster presentations of extreme high quality demonstrated the impressive need to bring the expertise of industry, academia, and regulatory authorities together in order to meet the challenges of modern medicine design, production, and application. This created an atmosphere of truly international scientific collaboration and exchange during the meeting. The 7th World Meeting on Pharmaceutics, Biopharmaceutics, and Pharmaceutical Technology will be held in Malta on March 8–11, 2010. In continuation of the successful Barcelona meeting, emphasis will be placed on industrially-relevant topics in order to help bridge the gap between fundamental academic research and industrial applications. For more detailed information, visit the meeting’s Web site at http://www.worldmeeting.org, or email info@worldmeeting.org.