4th Annual MIBio Conference
MIBio 2014 "Stability of biopharmaceuticals – Getting the chemistry right"
MIBio 2014 was organised by the Formulation Science and Technology Group (FSTG) of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences (APS) with valuable support from the Joint Colloids Group (RSC/SCI) and the Health Tech and Medicines Knowledge Transfer Network (Health KTN). The event was held on 30th September 2014 at Howard theatre at Downing College, Cambridge.
The MIBio conference series aims to engage world leading experts from academia and industry in a discussion on how the latest molecular interaction based discoveries can be exploited in biopharmaceutical formulation to produce more effective and safer therapeutic products. The importance of formulation in the biopharmaceutical development process has been steadily increasing as it enables new stable products for convenient delivery formats or life-cycle management of existing products. It is one of our goals to communicate this importance more widely.
The main focus of MIBio 2014 was on understanding key chemical interactions that affect stability of biopharmaceutical products. Biopharmaceutical compositions are complex chemical systems involving various chemical interactions between active and inactive ingredients; and the container holding the composition. These interactions can affect the quality of the product. Chemical stability aspects of a wide range of biopharmaceuticals from peptides to glyco-conjugate vaccines were discussed during the day. In addition to the technical challenge of designing chemically stable formulations, the clinical, commercial and regulatory considerations of chemical stability were presented by key international experts in the field.
MIBio 2014 was a very interesting and educational event, in keeping with the core tenet of the University. We hope that the discussions started on the day will lead to new collaborations and discoveries that will help steer the development of the next generation formulation technologies. We are grateful to all the speakers, poster presenters and discussion panel members as well as all the sponsors and exhibitors who joined us, without whose support we could not organise events like this. Please visit their websites as they have a lot to offer and are your partners in research and product development.
We look forward to seeing you at MIBio 2015!
The MIBio 2014 organising committee is:
- Jan Jezek (Arecor)
- Nicholas Darton (Arecor)
- Tejash Shah (GSK)
- Stephen Harding (University of Nottingham)