21st ISAM Congress focused on emerging trends

Several of the sessions involved audience participation, including a debate between Peter Le Souef of the University of Western Australia and Chris O’Callaghan of University College London on the question “will personalized medicine decrease the relevance of aerosol therapy?” While Prof. Le Souef somewhat half-heartedly argued “yes” on the premise that the possibility of immunomodulation for the treatment asthma may make aerosol therapy for that disease less relevant in the future, he conceded that Prof. O’Callaghan’s “no” argument was probably valid for other diseases, and the audience vote was unanimous for O’Callaghan.

In the final session of the congress, Phil Kuehl of Lovelace Biomedical and a co-chair of the meeting, provided a quick summary of a pre-meeting full day workshop on e-cigarettes and then asked the assembled ISAM members how ISAM can get involved in the process of standardizing testing and regulatory requirements for these products. Otmar Schmidt of Helmholtz Zentrum München questioned whether ISAM should get involved at all given the potential harm of e-cigarettes, which led to a discussion about ISAM’s mission and how such a project might fit in. In the end, when asked whether ISAM should get involved, the vast majority of the audience agreed that it should.

Abstracts for the meeting presentations and posters are available from the Journal of Aerosol Medicine and Pulmonary Drug Delivery.