Attendees at the November 2013 inhalation meeting in Nanjing
On the first day of the Inhalation Drug Symposium 2013 held November 8-9, 2013 in Nanjing, China, a group of five inhalation medicine specialists proposed the formation of a new organization to be called the the Inhalation Drug Delivery Association (IDDA), according to chairs Anny Shen and Shuguang Hou.
The approximately 90 meeting participants, which included academics, clinicians, representatives of the China Pharmacopoeia, the CFDA, and Chinese pharmaceutical companies, agreed and voted to elect 19 committee members for the IDDA. The committee then formed seven working groups with focuses including regulation, R&D, education, industry technology development, market, and clinical use.
The Nanjing inhalation conference
According to Anny Shen and Shuguang Hou, the IDDA “proposes that all participants work together to improve inhalation products in research, development, quality and therapy to a high level in China, and also hopes to have collaborations with other international groups in the future.”
The group plans to have a web site in place by early 2014, will hold committee regular committee meetings, and will “organize additional conferences in the future to help improve the availability and quality of inhalation products and increase the awareness on the correct usage of inhalers to achieve optimum performance,” according to Shen
The first IDDA conference will take place in Nanjing sometime in 2014, she says, and the organization plans to partner with the Inhalation Asia conference to be held September 2015 in Shenyang. The group will also participate in RDD Asia 2014, which will take place in India. Shen is one of the organizers of Inhalation Asia, which held its inaugural meeting in Hong Kong in June and co-chaired the 1st Dry Powder Inhalation China Technology Conference took place in Shanghai in April.
In addition to the formation of the IDDA, the Nanjing inhalation symposium also featured talks on inhalation product quality, regulation, the 2015 edition of the China Pharmacopoeia, inhalation technology and therapy, asthma/COPD treatment with inhaled drugs, and the status of the CFC to HFA transition in China.
Shen estimates that over 100 people are working on OINDP products in China, which has 30 million asthma patients and 40 million COPD patients, with both patient populations growing rapidly.
