DDA2020: Frontiers in Drug Delivery: Celebrating Early Career Researchers
First Virtual Conference organized by the Australian Chapter of Controlled Release Society
Drug Delivery Australia is an annual conference organized by the Australian Chapter of Controlled Release Society (AusCRS). This year, due to the Covid-19 pandemic that has limited nationwide travel, the conference was held virtually. The one-day virtual conference was held on the 23rd of November 2020, attracting over 300 registrants from Australia and overseas. The conference was proudly sponsored by Controlled Release Society, Waters Corporation and ATA Scientific. This year, the theme of the conference was set to celebrate the achievements of early career researchers (ECRs) across Australia and in accordance to the theme, the organizing committee for the conference was also represented by ECRs from universities across Australia.
The current president of AusCRS, Associate Professor Amirali Popat from The University of Queensland started us off with a warm welcome and brief introduction to the organization and the conference. Following this, Professor Justin Hanes from John Hopkins University School of Medicine, USA, our plenary speaker kicked us off with an inspiring presentation reflecting on his personal journey and success of translating new drug delivery technologies into commercial products in the USA. His engaging presentation also welcomed many questions from the audience during the Q&A session over Zoom webinar.
Plenary session with Professor Justin Hanes, John Hopkins University School of Medicine.
The rest of the conference was divided into four sessions, with a presentation from an invited speaker (15 min including Q&A), followed by rapid presentations from ECRs (7 min including Q&A). The four sessions were according to the following themes, (i) cancer, (ii) chronic infections, (iii) cancer, oral and drug delivery, and (iv) emerging material for drug delivery. There were two additional sessions with further presentations from invited speaker and ten minutes presentations from our sponsors, Waters Corporation and ATA Scientific Instruments. In summary, we had one plenary speaker, six invited speakers, 16 speakers (chosen from abstracts) and 2 sponsor presentations. During lunch break, participants were encouraged to join the poster sessions which was held simultaneously across five different breakout rooms. We received a total of 42 posters and presenters were given time to present their posters and discuss their outcomes with attendees in their breakout rooms. Posters are also available on our website for general viewing.
Poster presentation in breakout rooms with interactive discussion from audience and presenters.
Our invited speakers for the day alongside their title of presentations are as below (in order of presentations):
- Professor Michael Yu - Nanoparticles designed as carriers and biomodulators for drug delivery applications
- Dr Nicky Thomas - Nanomedicine approaches to combat infectious diseases
- Professor Kristofer Thurecht - Understanding controlled delivery of drugs from polymeric nanomedicines
- Dr Pegah Varamini - Novel targeted nano-theranostic delivery systems for precision therapy of triple-negative breast cancer
- Associate Professor Megan Lord - Bioengineered growth factor delivery systems for vascular applications
The last invited speaker was a special presentation from Professor Michael Roberts as to celebrate his retirement this year, where he gave us an inspiring presentation on his journey as a researcher and provided some tips to our ECRs on how they can be successful in their research career. The conference was concluded with closing remarks and announcement of presentation prizes by Dr Kara Vine-Perrow, vice president of AusCRS. Aria Ahmed Cox (UNSW) won the best oral presentation, with Chelsea Thorn (UniSA) and Armira Azuar (UQ) as runner-up. Ruba Almasri (UniSA) and Sarah Bashir (UQ) won the best poster presentations prizes.
Overall, the first virtual conference organized by AusCRS was a successful event, providing many opportunities for ECRs to build their organizational skills and presentation skills with other researchers in the drug delivery field across Australia. The future of drug delivery research and development is very exciting, and we cannot wait to hear more at our next conference, hopefully in Adelaide, South Australia. Follow us on Twitter (@AustralianCRS) for more details! We would like to thank our sponsors, presenters and attendees for making this a success!
A compilation of presentations from #DDA2020.
