Australian Chapter of the Controlled Release Society organised the 2019 Drug Delivery Australia Conference on ‘Emerging Materials for Drug Delivery, Diagnosis and Imaging’ at The Pharmacy Australia Centre of Excellence - the University of Queensland, Brisbane.
Event date: 18-19th November 2019 Total attendee: Approximately 180
Venue: The School of Pharmacy, The University of Queensland, Brisbane.
The Australian Chapter of the Controlled Release Society organised the Drug Delivery Australia 2019 conference on November 18-19th at the School of Pharmacy, The University of Queensland, Brisbane. The event attracted approximately 180 delegates (the largest ever) including scientists and engineers from industry and academia. The event was sponsored by the Australian Chapter of the Controlled Release Society, The University of Queensland and 3 industry companies (Waters, In Vitro technologies and ATA Scientific) which allowed the organisers to invite the leading scientists from a great mix of the scientific communities to present the recent advancements and emerging trends in formulation, pharmaceutical, material, biological, bio-imaging and chemistry fields, and to provide an insight in the emerging materials and drug delivery systems for medical applications. The leading researchers from the United States, Portugal, Germany, Italy, New Zealand and India came and shared their inspirational successful stories on emerging materials and novel drug delivery systems.
The event gathered a great mix of the scientific communities from formulation, pharmaceutical, material, biological, bio-imaging and chemistry backgrounds and the attendees took the full advantage of the events and sessions for networking and collaboration. The program included plenary lectures and parallel sessions on the topics of Local Drug Delivery Systems, Emerging Materials for Drug Delivery/Diagnostics, Infection and Immunity, Oral Drug Delivery Systems, Cancer Drug Delivery Systems and Topical Drug Delivery Systems. Keynote and invited speakers, young researchers and research students presented the podium or poster presentations on emerging materials and technologies in pharmaceutical and biomaterial drug delivery systems. The event allowed the participants to interact with the leading researchers with the most recent updated information, to discuss the current and future advancements and trends, and provided an opportunity to build a potential collaboration opportunity via the social events.
The DDA 2019 was opened by Amirali Popat (the member of CRS Australian local chapter) with the warm welcome and brief introduction about the conference programme. Briefly, the programme included plenary talk (60 minutes including Q&A), keynote talks (30 minutes including Q&A), invited talks (20 minutes including Q&A), early career researcher talks (10 minutes including Q&A), research student oral talk competitions (10 minutes including Q&A) and poster presentation competitions (who presented their posters at the predetermined times).
The conference commenced with the plenary talk from Prof. Samir Mitragotri (Harvard University, USA) who gave an inspiring talk on hitching a ride on blood cells for targeted delivery for nanoparticles, was followed by engaging Q&A session. Furthermore, the first session, chaired by Heather Benson (President of CRS Australia/DDA, Curtin University), included three presentations from the keynote speakers – 1) Prof. Bruno Sarmento (University of Porto) talked about the functionalised nanoparticles for the disruptive intestinal delivery for anti-diabetic peptides, 2) Dr. Vanessa Zann (Quotient Sciences) highlighted the use of real-time adaptive manufacturing and clinical testing for the optimisation of modified release formulations, and 3) Prof Nico Voelcker (Monash University) ended the session with an interesting talk on engineering porous silicon nanoparticles for smart drug delivery. Furthermore, the poster presentation competitions (where the posters were judged based on science, quality and presentation and questions) was held during the lunch time followed by the parallel afternoon sessions on Local Drug Delivery Systems I and Emerging Materials for Drug Delivery. The day ended with the cruise conference dinner at the Kookaburra Showboat cruise where the top seven poster nominees were announced for CRS travel bursary for three minute rapid fire talk competition on the second day.
The second day of the DDA 2019 conference started with parallel sessions on Cancer Drug Delivery System, and Infection and Immunity, followed by the parallel sessions on Emerging Materials for Drug Delivery/Diagnostics and Local Drug Delivery Systems II after the morning tea. The final session, chaired by Ben Boyd (Monash University), started with three minute rapid fire talk competition from top seven poster nominees followed by round table discussion with expert researchers including Samir Mitrgotri (Harvard University), Maria Kallvalaris (University of New South Wales), Ranjeny Thomas (The University of Queensland), Mike Roberts (The University of Queensland) and Vanessa Zann. The panel discussion provided an opportunity to discuss and highlight the current challenges, in translating formulations into clinic.
The CRS sponsored two awards for research students – 1) best oral talk, and 2) best poster presentation, and the winners were granted $1000 AUD towards the travel expenses to attend the CRS Annual Meeting 2020 in Las Vegas. In addition, MDPI sponsored two outstanding poster awards and the winders were awarded 500 CHF MDPI vouchers. The awardee were selected based on comprehension and content, engagement and communication, and quality and presentation. The winners of DDA 2019 were Mengyang Liu (University of Auckland) for best oral talk, Chee Wei Ang (The University of Queensland) for best poster to podium presentation, and Yunxin Xiao (Monash University) and Mubtasim Murshed (Monash University) were winners for outstanding posters. Congratulations to these outstanding students!
Overall, the largest ever #DDA2019 event was a great success and it provided a great science and networking opportunities with an outstanding cruise dinner that allowed to have chat with old and new friends. We would like to invite you to attend the next year’s DDA 2020 at the University of South Australia, Adelaide. Stay tuned for more details.
