EAPB & 11th European Congress on Biotechnology (ECB)

The 11th European Congress on Biotechnology took place in Basle, 24-29 August 2003. The ECB11 was organised by the European Federation of Biotechnology (EFB), it was the 25th anniversary of EFB. EAPB is the official associated section for Pharma & Medical Biotechnology of EFB and organised one day with pharmaceutical biotechnology topics (Monday, August 25).

The morning symposium was “Biopharmaceuticals – status, formulation, development and outlook” organised and chaired by the President of EAPB, Rainer Müller. The invited opening lecture by Gary Walsh about the status of biopharmaceuticals in Europe was attended extremely well with approximately 300 participants. Andreas Woppmann, independent consultant from Cambridge/USA reported about biopharmaceutical product development strategies, Rainer Müller, PharmaSol GmbH in Berlin, about delivery systems for biopharmaceutical drugs.
The afternoon symposium “Regulatory aspects of biotechnology drugs” was organised and chaired by Sven Stegemann/Capsugel. Prof. Cichutek from the German Paul Ehrlich Institute presented a lecture about “Development of gene transfer medicinal products”. J. H. Trouvin from the French Medicine Agency/Paris gave a talk about “Biotechnology-derived medicinal products. Regulatory framework at the European level. CPMP activities.” The symposium closed with a perspective from industry, David Jones from Boehringer Ingelheim/Germany presented “Differences between biotechnology and standard chemical entities – a regulatory perspective”. Regulatory is a very important but “dry” matter, but the attendance of approximately 100 participants to this symposium indicated the attention given to it by the companies present at ECB. The total number of participants at ECB 11 was about 1100. In addition to the symposia, EAPB organised its second annual Membership Meeting during this congress. The President reported about the achievements of EAPB since its last Membership Meeting in Florence in April 2002. As an important point the meeting discharged the outgoing Board before the upcoming elections in EAPB in autumn this year.

EAPB and Germany
The 5th International Conference and Workshop on “Cell Culture and In Vitro Models for Drug Absorption and Delivery” will take place at the Saarland University/Germany from February 25 – March 5, 2004. It is organised by Prof. C.-M. Lehr and Dr. U. Schäfer, both from the Department of Biopharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Technology in Saarbrücken. There are seminars and practical lab courses. The topics of the seminars range from various cell culture models, industrial implementation of such models to bioinformatics. Besides other organisations such as APV and EUFEPS the conference is organised under the auspices of EAPB. Further information see InfoClick below.

EAPB and biotech literature
As a new service to its members EAPB reviews books about pharmaceutical biotechnology and related issues appearing on the market and publishes condensed recensions. This review does not only cover books regarding scientific and technology aspects but also related issues such as business development. Recently the book “Starting a Business in the Life Sciences: From Idea to Market” has been published by Dr. Henrik L. Luessen working for the very successful company OctoPlus. The book describes his business model applied to OctoPlus. This model survived successfully the downturn in the life science industry and made OctoPlus today a European market leader in its particular niche business. It is definitely an interesting book for companies active in this area. To order the book see the InfoClick below.