Drug Lords: The American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists

Source: ExecDigital US September 2007

Date :25/09/2007 17:16:32

Members of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists are on a crusade to help improve the time to market, development cost, and effectiveness of the drugs we need.

By David Weldon

If anybody has access to the best drugs, it is certainly the members of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists.

That statement isn’t meant to pass judgment. It’s just a simple truth.

With a membership of approximately 13,000, this volunteer professional association represents the folks that quite literally develop the top drug products at this country’s premier pharmaceutical companies, academic institutions and government agencies in public health.

From Johnson & Johnson, to Merck, to Pfizer, the members of this association hail from the who’s who of American drug companies.

“Our members are involved with the discovery, development, manufacture, distribution, and marketing of drugs — every step in the process, from lab to bedside,” explains John Lisack, Jr., executive director of the AAPS.

But their involvement in the association has nothing to do with their employers.

“We are not a trade association, we are a professional association,”

Lisack says. “We are all about individual members who want to improve the health and well-being of people.”

While members of the group do come from all sectors — academia, government, and industry; by far the greatest percentage — approximately 90 percent — are with drug manufacturers. They are en masse smart (58% hold Ph-D degrees), dedicated (this is, after all, a totally volunteer group), and compassionate (the words pride and accomplishment repeatedly come into the conversation with Lisack).

They are also driven to find new and better ways to develop drugs that can be brought to market quicker, more efficiently, and more safely. And that is what draws them together.

According to Lisack, the association is essentially a giant networking opportunity for these drug scientists, who use the association as a conduit to share information, exchange ideas, and discuss best practices.

It is an important facet of the pharmaceutical industry, Lisack explains, due to the great time periods, and enormous financial investments, required to bring many drugs to market — and the potential risks if they aren’t developed in the best ways possible.

The association was founded in 1986, when pharmaceutical scientists determined that they weren’t be totally served by membership in the American Pharmaceutical Association, which had previously been their primary assocation.

“Our interests were better served on the science side, rather than the pharmaceutical side,” Lisack notes.

So the association was born — catering to the professionals that do initial drug testing and development, rather than those that dispense them or analyze their use in combination with other medications.

For the AAPS, top interests center around information sharing and member education and trends in medicine and their impact on drug development. The association members routinely creates focus groups to explore various health issues in depth, and how their efforts can bring benefit to patients and the general public.

“We look at the latest research and findings in drug development, and share that information with each other,” Lisack explains. “We have eight scientific sections, which are further divided into 37 focus groups. They put on cutting-edge programs to educate their peers.”

Focus groups are very fluid things, Lisack notes, since they can be formed quickly, and on virtually any drug-related topic. Members bring the ideas to the forefront, and the association acts as the conduit to bring members together what share a desire to explore it, Lisack says.

The association holds two annual meetings, the AAPS Annual Meeting and Exposition, which traditionally draws approximately 9,000 members, and the National Biotechnology Conference (NBC), Lisack says. The locations rotate among cities in the United States and Canada and the next NBC meeting will be held in Toronot in June.

The participation in events in Canada is not inappropriate, Lisack notes, since the association is international in its membership. Approximately 17 percent of the professional members are from other countries.

In addition, the association has established educational programs around the world, and currently has 54 student chapters in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Singapore, Italy, and Brazil. 25 percent of students involved with current education programs are based in foreign countries.

The association is also ramping up its distance learning efforts, Lisack says, in order to serve a great number of students that wish to benefit from access to association members.

The AAPS also works with other associations on a variety of educational and outreach projects, Lisack says. “We very much enjoy working together to serve the interests of our members and to share knowledge.”

The end game in all of this, Lisack says, is “the faster, and better, development of drugs. It can take up to 15 years to develop a drug, and it can be very expensive.”

With increased information sharing, drug companies could reduce redundant research and development efforts, and speed the process to actual marketing of critical drug discoveries.

While the idea of free information exchange among professionals might seem to be counter-productive to drug companies, Lisack says the opposite is the case.

“With the amount of time that goes into developing drugs, there’s a tremendous risk for the company each time,” Lisack notes. “There is a limited amount of time that a company can recoup its investments.”

Reducing duplicate research and development efforts, as well as the outsourcing of some processes to smaller companies, could be a major step in streamlining the drug development process in this country, Lisack believes.

“The individuals will be working together to develop a model to improve the pharmaceutical manufacturing process — to help make drugs faster, cheaper, and that are more effective,” Lisack says.

Looking to the future, Lisack says one of the biggest challenges the association will be facing is “filling the pipeline with pharmaceutical scientists.”

Lisack says the numbers entering the field are “not where they should be,” and the association is looking at ways it can help encourage more people to enter it.

And, of course, maintaining a large national association of all-volunteer members is never an easy task, he notes.

“We do a better job than most,” Lisack indicates, “but having the time to put into volunteer activities is becoming more rare.”