The 2019 APN Symposium
The 1st APN symposium, hosted by Faculty of Pharmacy, Mahidol University under the direction of Dr. Korbtham Sathirakul, was held on November 19-20, 2019, in Bangkok, Thailand, along with satellite workshops on November 18.
This inaugural 2019 APN symposium was a great success. Due to the capacity of the conference hall and university staff, at first, the number of 150 participants was targeted. However, the seats were overbooked and only 174 people from 15 countries could be accommodated, with more than 20 people on the waiting list. Thus, one may say approximately 200 people participated in the 2019 first APN symposium.
This implies that, in terms of launching, APN was as successful as or did better than PAGE. In PAGE, the inaugural meeting in 1992 started with 59 people, and it took 8 years to reach 156 participants in 2000 and 9 years to reach 200 participants in 2001.
The symposium was not only well-attended in terms of the number of participants, but speaker allocation was well balanced across countries, with 18 speakers invited from 9 APN countries (6 from Thailand, 2 from each of India, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, and 1 from each of Malaysia, Nepal, Singapore, and Sri Lank) and 1 from the US.
This balanced speaker allocation is attributed to APN’s efforts to enhance and expand regional development and networking opportunities by holding the symposium outside Japan, China and Korea as well. Therefore, APN 2019 achieved its goal of providing a pan Asian networking opportunity, which cannot be seen in other international meetings in Asia, including APC.
In the satellite workshops, two topics were covered, one focusing on PBPK instructed by Dr. Korbtham Sathirakul of Mahidol University, Thailand, and the other on Quantitative Systems Pharmacology instructed by Dr. Dongwoo Chae of Yonsei University, Korea.
The 2020 APN Symposium
The 2nd APN symposium, hosted by the Society of Pharmacometrics and Health Analytics (SOPHAS) of India under the direction of Dr. Surulivelrajan Mallayasamy of Manipal Academy of Higher Education, was held on November 18-19, 2019, along with satellite workshops on November 20. The 2020 APN symposium was held as a virtual meeting due to COVID-19 restrictions,with registration fees waived to encourage participation.The 2020 APN symposium was also a success, with 365 people registered. For speaker invitation, among the 18 invited speakers, 16 were from 8 APN countries(5 from India, 2 from each of Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Thailand, and 1 from each of Indonesia, Nepal, and Sri Lank) and 1 from the US. Continuing from the 2019 APN symposium, one can also see a balanced distribution of speaker participation among APN countries.In the 2020 APN symposium, 8 student speakers were also invited from APN member countries, to provide presentation opportunities to future pharmacometricians for education and training purposes.The satellite workshop was conducted with the topic of a new age modeling and simulation platform Pumas (Pharmaceutical Modeling and Simulation). The workshop was instructed by Dr. Vijay Ivaturi of the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, USA.
The 2021 APN Workshop
The 2021 APN educational workshop titled “Basic Pharmacometrics Course using Monolix”, hosted by the Faculty of Pharmacy Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia under the direction of Dr. Akhmad Kharis Nugroho, was held virtually on June 3, 2021. The course was intended to focus on familiarizing students and scientists who are new to or wish to advance their knowledge in the area of pharmacometrics. Almost 200 participants registered, which was the maximum capacity for the workshop.
The 2021 APN Symposium
The 3rd APN symposium will be held virtually on November 25-26, 2021, along with satellite workshops on November 21-24. The symposium will be hosted by the College of Medicine, National Taiwan University under the direction of Dr. Yunn-Fang Ho.