Still time to submit an abstract for the EACPT Congress in Sweden: 29th June to 2nd July 2019

The next EACPT Congress will be held from 29th June to 2nd July in 2019 in Stockholm as a partnership between the EACPT and the Swedish Society for Pharmacology, Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics. 

The Congress will address Tomorrow’s Healthcare Challenges and will be held at the City Conference Centre – 5 minutes from Stockholm Central Station.

Abstract closing date extended to 14th March.

Register online 

The Congress Reception on the evening of Saturday 29th June, will be held at Stockholm City Hall, the venue of the Nobel Prize banquet.

The Keynote Opening Lecture will be given by the President at the Karolinska Institute, Professor Ole Petter Ottersen, on global health and clinical pharmacology.

Around 60 invited speakers are expected from throughout Europe and beyond. Congress keynote lectures, sessions and themes will include:

• Advanced therapies
• Chronic disease
• Clinical pharmacologists versus computers
• Closing the money gap
• Drug regulation in the 2020’s
• EACPT meets Asian Societies
• EPHAR-EACPT joint symposium on personalised medicine
• Ethics in clinical research
• Global Health
• How to become a clinical pharmacologist
• How to measure drug exposure
• How to measure drug use
• How to perform a health economic study
• Interprofessional exchange for better drug treatment
• Misuse of medicines
• Patient empowerment
• Preparing tomorrow’s prescribers
• Prescribing and deprescribing
• Targeting small populations
• The critically ill patient
• Treating ageing populations
• Treating cancer
• Treating children

Major awards to be presented at the Stockholm Congress include the EACPT Lifetime Achievement Award and the biennial EACPT Scientific Award for best publication on a clinical pharmacology or therapeutic theme.

Opportunities for EACPT Associate Members include
* discounted registration fees for EACPT meetings
* networking with colleagues worldwide through the global EACPT network of Associate Members
* active involvement in EACPT Working Parties and other activities

Find out how to become an Associate Member of the EACPT

Future EACPT Congresses will be held in:
– 2021 Athens
– 2023 Rotterdam

The EACPT was founded in 1993 and now includes as members all national organisations for clinical pharmacology in Europe, as well as organisations from further afield internationally. The EACPT aims to provide educational and scientific support for the more than 4000 individual professionals interested in clinical pharmacology and therapeutics throughout the European region, with its congresses attended by a global audience. The EACPT also advises policy makers on how the specialty can contribute to human health and wealth.

Centenary for the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine: a conference, awards for medical writing and new associate memberships

The Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine is organising its Centenary Conference, which is to be held on 7^th December at the Royal College of Physicians in London. The December 2018 FPM Centenary Conference will include a poster awards session showcasing national and international studies aimed at Transforming Health. The Conference will be eligible for 6 CPD points.

Register for the Conference 

Submit an abstract for the Transforming Health poster session at the 7th December Conference.

Talks by expert clinicians will provide updates on best medical practice in diagnostics and new therapies with regard to common serious clinical disorders, ranging from lung disease to cancer, stroke and cardiac disease, liver problems  and other serious clinical disease. Speakers will also discuss management of new clinical challenges, including antibiotic resistance, the impact of ageing on co-morbidity, and other important current challenges for clinical practice.

Speakers and discussants will include Professor Christopher Byrne, University of Southampton on Identifying and managing non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, Professor Peter Barnes FRS, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College, with updates on treating asthma and COPD, Professor Tom Kirkwood CBE, University of Newcastle, on ageing, health and multi-morbidity, Professor Sir Munir Pirmohamed, University of Liverpool NHS Chair of Pharmacogenetics on applying personalised medicine in clinical practice. Dr Tim Nicholson, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s Medical School, on functional neurological disorders and Professor Anthony Rudd, Guy’s and St Thomas’s, National Clinical Director for Stroke with NHS England, on reducing the severity of stroke. FPM President Donald Singer FPM journal editors Bernard Cheung (Postgraduate Medical Journal) and Ken Redekop (Health Policy and Technology) will give a brief overview of the FPM and its activities.
 

The FPM is a British non-profit organisation founded in the autumn of 1919 as a merger of the Fellowship of Medicine and the Postgraduate Medical Association, with Sir William Osler as its first president. Its initial aims were the development of educational programmes in all branches of postgraduate medicine. The FPM now organises clinical and research meetings and publishes two journals. The FPM has since 1925 published the international journal, the Postgraduate Medical Journal. In 2012 the Fellowship launched a new international journal, Health Policy and Technology, published on the Fellowship’s behalf by Elsevier.

The Postgraduate Medical Journal publishes topical reviews, commentaries and original papers on themes across the medical spectrum. It provides continuing professional development for all doctors, from those in training, to their teachers, and active clinicians, by publishing papers on a wide range of topics relevant to clinical practice. Papers published in PMJ describe current practice and new developments in all branches of medicine; describe relevance and impact of translational research on clinical practice; provide background relevant to examinations; and papers on medical education and medical education research.

The FPM’s peer-reviewed journal Health Policy and Technology focuses on past, present and future health policy and the role of technology in clinical and non-clinical national and international health environments. It aims to foster closer links with policy-makers, health professionals, health technology providers, patient groups and academia.

Further ways in which the FPM will mark its anniversary  include introducing a new Associate Member category for the FPM and launch of new international awards for excellence in medical writing by doctors in social media.

The new Associate Member category for the FPM will be open to doctors in established postgraduate training posts, to senior doctors in established posts and to other experts who are interested in postgraduate medicine. Authors and reviewers for the official journals of the FPM – Health Policy and Technology and the Postgraduate Medical journal will be entitled to a reduced membership fee for their first year as Associate Members. Benefits for Associate Members will include a reduction in the registration fee for attending FPM educational events and a reduced annual electronic subscription to the PMJ or HPT journal. See the FPM website for more details about how to apply to become anAssociate Member of the FPM .

The FPM will also launch international awards to recognise best social media writing on medical themes.  To be eligible, articles should be aimed at increasing understanding by the public and health professionals of important health-related issues. Articles published online since 1st January 2018 will be eligible.

Up to 5 awards of £100 each will initially be made – one for each major geographical region: the Americas, Europe, Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Australia/New Zealand.  The judging panel will include health professionals from the FPM and from the Editorial Boards of HPT and the PMJ and experts in social media. Winning writers will have the opportunity to publish their award-winning article in HPT or the PMJ, depending on the theme of the article.

See the FPM website for details of how to enter for the writing awards.

Digital Health: Catapulting Personalised Medicine Forward

In a new collaboration, on 27th November 2014 the UK’s Digital Catapult, the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine, IDEALondon, and Vital Transformation brought together leading experts working at the frontiers of research where personalised medicine and medicines, and health technologies intersect.

 

Round table sessions featured demonstrations of how next-generation technologies and social media will integrate with public health, thus facilitating the burgeoning market for personalised medicines. The symposium included disruptive start-ups and technology practitioners finding common ground in bringing secure personal health data to the public and advice on stratified medicines to prescribers and their patients.

 

The Digital Catapult, launched in November 2014, aims to place electronic and mobile technologies at the forefront of their future public health strategy. 

Publications arising from the symposium will be published in the FPM journal Health Policy and Technology.

 

See the meeting agenda and speakers. 

 

See conference report.

Helping to improve safety in the use of medicines in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Press Release: 00.00h Monday 3rd November 2014

Medicines have powerful effects to help patients. However medicines also have the potential to cause powerful harmful effects. Education on how to ensure safe and effective use of medicines is therefore vitally important for patients and health services.

An International Symposium on Medicines and Patient Safety is being held in Kigali, Rwanda at the College of Medicine and Health Sciences (CMHS) on Wednesday 5th November 2014, followed by an international videoconference on Prescribing Skills and on Pharmacovigilance on Thursday 6th November with contributors from the UK and the WHO. The meeting will include talks on medicines and communicable and non-communicable diseases by national and international clinical and policy experts from Rwanda, South Africa, USA and the UK.

The Symposium is being held in partnership with Pharmacology for Africa, a consortium of 8

Sub-Saharan countries supported by the International Union of Pharmacology, and led by Professor Douglas Oliver and Professor Christiaan Brink, from South Africa, both of whom will be speaking at the meeting.The 3 major themes of the symposium are: educating health professionals in safe and effective use of medicines; regulating drugs, including pharmacovigilance and quality of medicines, reducing harm from high risk medicines and in patients with high risk conditions.

Speakers will discuss ways to reduce risk from medicines for treating children and expectant mothers, preventing disorders of the heart and stroke, and for treating cancer, retroviral disease and kidney disease. There will also be round table discussions not only on prescribed medicines, but also on the risks of over-the-counter and traditional medicines.

Pharmacist Dr Kayumba said: “The Symposium is timely in building on strategy in Rwanda on pharmacovigilance and on developing our undergraduate and postgraduate educational systems for good practice in use of medicines.”

Physician Dr Musabeyezu added: “The Symposium will also provide important updates for doctors, pharmacists and nurses from Referrral and District Hospitals from throughout Rwanda on reducing risk of harm from high risk medicines often used for high risk diseases”. 

Clinical Pharmacologist Professor Singer noted: “Partnership with Pharmacology for Africa brings important opportunities to improve patient health and safety through engaging with a wide range of international experts in education, training, clinical practice and research aimed at best practice in use of medicines.

The symposium is supported by the World Health Organisation, Pharmacology for Africa, the International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology, Partners in Health, the Rwanda Social Security Board and the University of Rwanda College of Medicine and Health Sciences

Information for Editors

For further information, including to arrange an interview with the organisers, and for a press pass to attend the symposium on 5th November 2014, email ISMPS@gmail.com

Symposium website

Symposium program

Symposium National and International Advisory Board

International Symposium on Medicines and Patient Safety: Kigali, Rwanda – 5th November, 2014

Education on how to ensure safe and effective use of medicines is vitally important for patients and health services.
Registration and abstract submission on the themes below is now open for the International Symposium on Medicines and Patient Safety in partnership with Pharmacology for Africa. The symposium will take place on Wednesday 5th November 2014 in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, under the auspices of the College of Medicine and Health Sciences of the University of Rwanda.
 
The 3 major themes of the symposium are:

• Educating health professionals  in safe and effective use of medicines
• Regulating drugs, including pharmacovigilance and quality of medicines
• Reducing harm from high risk medicines and in patients with high risk conditions

University Hospital, Kigali

Key topics to be discussed and welcome as submitted abstracts include

• education in pharmacology and clinical pharmacology
• developing good prescribing skills
• developing rational treatment guidelines
• drug regulation including quality of medicines
• Drugs and Therapeutics Committees
• medicines for non-communicable diseases
• pharmacovigilance
• safe systems for using medicines for high risk therapeutic areas, including retroviral disease, maternal and paediatric health, cancer, and renal disease
• traditional medicines

This Symposium will be of particular interest to health professionals and policy makers

View over Kigali hills

interested in the safe and effective use of medicines.
These include doctors, pharmacists, nurses and managers working in referral, district and community hospitals, community pharmacists, experts interested in the safe regulation and supply of medicines, health professionals interested in pharmacovigilance, and educators interested in postgraduate and undergraduate training of health professionals in clinical pharmacology, therapeutics and safe dispensing.
The symposium will also be of interest to professionals working in NGOs and patient safety organisations concerned with public health and with disease prevention and treatment.

New genetic test to decide treatment for difficult childhood asthma

Researchers in Dundee and Brighton have reported in the journal Clinical Science a randomised study using gene testing aimed at improving treatment selection in children with asthma.
The gene variant (Arg16 genotype) they tested has previously been reported to be associated with failure to respond to commonly used beta-2 agonist bronchodilator inhaler treatment.
My comments below on the potential and limitations of the study were included in a briefing by the Science Media Centre.

Prof Donald Singer, Member of the British Pharmacological Society and Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the University of Warwick, said:
“This study is important in providing evidence that simple genetic testing can be used to personalize selection of medicine in clinical practice – in this case applied to treatment choice in children with poorly controlled asthma.
“Their main outcome – less time off school because of asthma – is important both for children and their families. The authors were careful to consider poor compliance with asthma treatment as an important alternative explanation for their findings. However this is a small study and needs to be confirmed in larger well-controlled clinical trials.”

Research paper:
Tailored second-line therapy in asthmatic children with the Arg16 genotype.  Lipworth BJ et al., published in Clinical Science on Tuesday 8^th January 2013.

The 'Magic of Medicine' at the Dana Centre

@HealthMed The Science Museum’s Dana Centre in South Kensington in London aims to provide updates for adults on contemporary science, technology and culture in an informative and innovative format. For those who can't make it in person the Centre makes its events available for interaction online or by smartphone.

The next event at the Dana Centre - on 16th February - is a sell-out session on the Magic of Medicines, organised jointly with the public engagement team at the British Pharmacological Society. Themes will range from drug discovery from Nature by the ancient Babylonians and Greeks such as that chewing meadowsweet or willow bark relieves pain, to new experimental approaches to drug discovery, latest advances in personalizing medicines, supported by companion diagnostics, to the need to maintain vigilant pharmacology and related expertise ready to combat new and unresolved disease challenges, in the face a declining pharmaceutical sector.

What's on at the Science Museum’s Dana Centre.

The Science Museum’s Dana Centre is a collaboration between the British Science Association, the European Dana Alliance for the Brain, and the Science Museum. It is part of the Wellcome Wolfson Building, which is supported by four principal donors - the Wellcome Trust, the Wolfson Foundation, The Dana Foundation and the Garfield Weston Foundation.

From eternal fires to venom and personalised medicine

@HealthMed Why should picnics, 'show and tell', and morning break be memorable for a small boy in the Middle East? The road for weekend family visits to the river Zab passed near rocky slopes, above which a heat haze marked scattered low flames. The existence of eternal fires was noted by Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BC. A matter-of-fact article in the Pittsburgh Press, 14th May 1965, refers to these as 'seepage of natural gas in the Kirkuk oil field', part of the lands once ruled by Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire from ca. 605 BC – 562 BC. The Kirkuk area is now part of northern Iraq. These 'eternal fires', due to natural gas escaping from the rocks, give a possible explanation for the biblical reference to Daniel's three friends, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego being put to the den of fire. An obvious reason to survive the fires would be, at the right time, heavy rain temporarily extinguishing the flames. Other sites where self-igniting natural gas leaks occur include Central Java.
Primary school play was subject to interruption by sandstorms, and on one occasion spent indoors to avoid a plague of locusts, so dense as to make breathing difficult. Knowing then of locusts from stories of the plagues of Egypt, my memory is of surprise that hedge and tree leaves were largely uneaten. And 'show and tell' was made the more exotic because a friend's father had ready access to formalin - his son regularly bringing in a preserved scorpion or multi-coloured snake. Both may use in their venom sarafatoxin, a primitive form of endothelin, to immobilise pray through causing angina, due to severe coronary artery spasm. This knowledge about toxins arose from the discovery of endothelin by Yanagisawa, reported in 1988
The ancient town of Arapha, near the modern Kirkuk area oil field discovered in 1927, was an important centre in the time of the Babylonian King Hammurabi (fl. 1792 BC to 1750 BC), who provided the early legal Hammurabi Code, including rules for good medical practice, dating back to around 1772 BC. A historical connection to an early example of guidelines for 'personalising medicine'.

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© DRJ Singer

Companion diagnostics - a new concept for safer medicines?

@HealthMed Diagnostics can be used in several ways: to establish the nature, subtype and severity of disease; to monitor wanted response to treatment with lifestyle, drugs and/or devices; to monitor for disease progression and for adverse effects of treatment. The term 'companion diagnostics' describes coupling diagnostic imaging or laboratory investigations with selection and monitoring of treatment. Although a logical idea, its use in the medical setting appears surprisingly recent.

In the late and 1980s and 1990s, reports of the use of combination diagnostics appear largely applying to veterinary and dental practice.

The partner term 'companion therapeutics' was used in a 2003 commentary on the FDA  "Draft Guidance for Industry: Pharmacogenomic Data Submission" issued on November 3, 2003, which noted that the [pharmaceutical and biotech] 'industry is now expected to accelerate its development of diagnostics and companion therapeutics towards the goal of personalized medicine'. Implicit in this evolution of a personalised approached to medicines is the recognition that diagnostics will not necessarily identify that a given patient may have a safe or effective treatment flagged as the result of testing.

An early example of a pharmacogenetic companion diagnostic is the UGT1A1 molecular assay for in vitro diagnostic use. This pharmacogenetic test was approved in 2005 by the FDA for use as a companion diagnostic to a specific drug therapy. The test was to be used to identify mutations in this gene in patients who may as a result be at increased risk of adverse reaction to the anti-cancer drug irinotecan. 

2006 and 2007 discussion of companion diagnostics pointed both to more efficient patient selection for clinical trials and a more profitable approach for drug developers. 

Current descriptions use narrower definitions of companion diagnostics as referring to tests to 'identify and detect genetic, protein, or gene expression markers to predict whether a drug works or causes adverse effect in patients'. However there is a long history of coupling tests with treatment choice and refinement, in every therapeutic area from cardiovascular disorders such as hypertension and raised cholesterol, to anaemia and treatment of lung, gastro-intestinal, renal and neurological disease.

To date there are only 75 publications in the PubMed research database with companion diagnostics as a key term, with a typical recent example from August 2011 in Nature Reviews on Clinical Oncology by La Thangue and Kerr applied to cancer chemotherapy: Predictive biomarkers: a paradigm shift towards personalized cancer medicine.

© DRJ Singer