The main topics of this year’s closed days were physical pharmacy, advanced formulations, advanced manufacturing, process understanding and monitoring, in silico modelling, and solid-state characterization. The presentations (46 in total) by the PhD students were of a high level and actively discussed during the meeting. During this edition of the annual meeting, a prize was awarded (sponsored by the journal Pharmaceutics) for a presentation that included unsolved research problem(s) suitable for audience discussion (prerequisite and most important criterion). The novelty and potential value of the research, method soundness (results were not be considered since the research could be ongoing) and clarity of the presentation (orally and visibly) were also criteria. The winner of the award was Maximillian Karl (University of Copenhagen) with a presentation entitled “Micromechanical thermal analysis for solid state characterization of pharmaceutical formulations”.
The theme of the open day was preformulation, formulation screening and early development. There were 10 presentations (5 from academia (3 from PSSRC members) and 5 from industry).
The meeting was chaired and organized by Prof. Guy van den Mooter, together with the local organising committee: Bernard Appeltans, David Lüdecker, Sien Dedroog, Melissa Everaerts, Annelies Smeets, Maarten Batens, Elene de Cleyn and Timothy Pas.
During the steering committee meeting, held on 12th September, Thomas De Beer (University of Ghent) was elected as the new PSSRC president, succeeding Clare Strachan (University of Helsinki) and Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf was selected as the organising institution for the 13th Annual Meeting.
