The 2012 annual meeting of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, which took place from October 14-18 at the McCormick Place convention center in Chicago, drew a number of inhalation and nasal specialists for the focus group meeting, poster sessions, symposia, and exposition.
During the Inhalation and Nasal Technology Focus Group (INTFG) business meeting on October 16, the election of new committee members and a presentation from Guenther Hochhaus were almost overshadowed by a civilized but tense discussion with AAPS representative Grace Jones about the group’s annual fall seminars.
According to Jones, the AAPS would require that all future seminars must take place at facilities owned by the host organization and may not include a poster session. The 2012 INTFG seminar hosted by Gateway Analytical took place at a hotel rather than at Gateway’s headquarters. Few of the INTFG members in attendance appeared to accept Jones’s repeated assertions that the AAPS simply wanted to spare the host companies any excess expense.
After an extensive discussion in which several INTFG committee members reiterated that only a handful of potential hosts have facilities large enough to host a seminar and questioned why the companies could not decide for themselves what expenses they could afford, Jones appeared to back down a bit and said that she would take the question back to AAPS for further deliberation.
The 2012 INTFG ballot
An AAPS committee meeting this week did approve a proposed joint workshop sponsored by the INTFG, IPAC-RS, the USP, and the FDA planned for September 2013. The workshop, tentatively titled “Review of Current Practices and Futuristic Thinking on In vitro Testing and Technologies for OINDPs,” will likely take place in the Washington, DC area.
The INTFG members present elected Jeff Breit of Bend Research as Vice Chair for 2013; Phil Kuehl of Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute and Reinhard Vehring of the University of Alberta and Pearl Therapeutics were elected as general executive members. Tammy Shen from the University of North Carolina was the sole candidate for the position of student member and was elected to that post.
