The 3rd American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) Conference being organised by the Indian Pharmaceutical Association (IPA) would take place during 11 to 12 February, 2005 in Mumbai.

This time, keeping in mind the rapid progress achieved by Indian pharma industry and to stimulate drug discovery research, the IPA brings experts from American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS), Federation International Pharmaceutique (FIP), The Academy of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology of Japan (APSTJ) and Forum for Pharmaceutical Technology Innovation (FPTI) to the two day conference, to discuss drug discovery and development.

The conference focuses on Drug Discovery and Development: Challenges and Opportunities for India. Talking to media on the AAPS 2005 event, Subodh Priolkar, president of IPA said that this is the first time that a conference on drug discovery is being organized in India, with so many experts from all over the World.

The conference is designed to focus on technology platforms and issues related to early selection and development of candidate drug molecules, an integral part of the new drug discovery. This has assumed great importance to several Indian firms as they have embarked on to this frontier area of research. Indian scientists can play a major role in drug discovery research by utilizing their vast skill and expertise in the areas of medicinal chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology, formulation development and clinical assessment.

International experts from AAPS and FIP mainly Dr Vinod P Shah (USA), Dr Malcolm Rowland (UK), Dr Chandra Chaurasia (US FDA), Dr Avi Yacobi (Tauro), Dr Kamal Midha (UK), Dr George Digenis (USA), Dr Y Sugiyama (Japan) Dr Christian Joukhadar (Vienna), Dr David Hauss (USA), Dr Yoshinobu Fukumori (Japan) and Dr Ramesh Panchagnula (India) have confirmed to make presentation in the conference. Dr N K Ganguly, director general, ICMR will be the key note speaker. Dr Anji Reddy, chairman, DRL has consented to give a special lecture in this conference.

Speaking on the conference, Dr Rao V S V Vadlamudi, one of the conference Co-Chairs said "Knowledge-based issues related to in vitro, in silico and pre-clinical models predicting pharmacokinetics, application of techniques in micro dosing, approaches to increase drug absorption for water insoluble drug candidates and role played by enzymes in drug absorption would form thrust areas to be presented in this conference. Technologies such as scinitigrahy for evaluating site-specific absorption of drugs, role of micro-dialysis in drug discovery, application of nanotechnology to drug development and above all high throughput pharmaceutics technology for drug development form core of the deliberations"

Dr Vinod P Shah, US FDA, the co-chair from AAPS who is instrumental in getting all the experts from USA, UK, Europe and Japan stated "The conference will be of 2 day duration with a theme focusing on drug discovery and development and issues critical to the selection of development compounds".

The conference is targeted to those who are already involved in drug discovery and development, prospective companies who desire to enter this arena, scientists from pharmaceutical companies involved in drug discovery research, national research laboratories, independent research organizations, small entity firms who have capabilities to provide specific scientific and technology support will participate in the conference along with academicians. The conference will be an excellent platform for building new business relations and networking.

This conference will also have a Technology Show Case consisting of selected state-of-the art exhibition of technologies, equipment, service providers and corporate profiles.