The Edinburgh International Conference Centre
Drug Delivery to the Lungs (DDL) 24 will take place December 11-13 2013 in the recently expanded Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC), and organizers from the Aerosol Society say that they are eager to make good use of the EICC’s new facilities. After a multi-year construction project, the EICC has opened new exhibit and meeting spaces, providing additional opportunities for DDL attendees and exhibitors to interact compared to past years.
According to organizing committee member Ben Forbes, the expanded exhibition space will allow the conference to hold the technology exhibit and scientific poster sessions in the same room and will accommodate additional exhibitors in a “bigger and better layout.” The additional space also allows the committee to accept up to 80 poster abstracts, more than in previous years, Forbes says.
The EICC’s new facilities include a number of meeting rooms that can be booked for private meetings, as well as a cafe, making it easier for attendees to network and to discuss business opportunities. DDL has always offered networking during drinks receptions and lunch and coffee breaks, the organizers point out, and as the meeting has drawn increasing numbers of attendees from a wider geographical range, demand from delegates for space to hold private side meetings has grown.
Approximately 500 delegates are expected to attend DDL 24. Until several years ago, Forbes notes, the meeting drew attendees primarily from the UK; however, the trend has been toward a steady increase in international attendance, especially from the US, Australia, and continental Europe.
One draw for more global attendance over the past few years has been the addition of a half-day pre-conference meeting on a topic related to aerosol medicine hosted in conjunction with another scientific organization. Past collaborations have included pre-conference meetings with the European Pharmaceutical Aerosol Group (EPAG), the International Society of Aerosol Medicine (ISAM), and the Drugs in the Lungs Network of the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences (APS), bringing a wide range of OINDP specialists to Edinburgh.
The 2013 pre-conference symposium, titled “Dissolution of inhaled Products – In vitro developments, in vivo relevance and the potential impact on regulatory thinking,” is organized by the Joint Pharmaceutical Analysis Group (JPAG) of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. Speakers for the symposium include Sau Lee of the FDA, Sabine May of PharmBioTec, Rob Price of the University of Bath, and Robyn Sadler of GSK.
The DDL conference program, which is now available on the DDL website, also reflects a trend toward internationalization. This year, Forbes points out, the conference program will feature more presenters from outside the UK than from within, including the presenter of the DDL Award lecture, Jolyon Mitchell, an OIP consultant and Affiliate Professor at the Daniel K. Inouye College of Pharmacy at the University of Hawaii.
