This article was written by Francis Ojara Williams, an APT program fellow and member of the Ugandan chapter of Pharmacometrics Africa.
Scientific meetings act as hubs for networking, exchanging ideas, and forging professional relationships amongst its attendees. Over the last 50 years the field of pharmacometrics has grown remarkably, and increased in acceptance in academia and industry. The Population Approach Group Europe (PAGE) meeting is a signature annual event in pharmacometrics, hosted in a selected European city. The growth in pharmacometrics is well mirrored in the growth of the PAGE meeting. Though there is an expansion in the number of academic groups offering training in quantitative pharmacology (and related fields) only a few established groups, in terms of expertise and number of studentships, currently exist. Students from established groups benefit more from the rigorous scientific exchanges from within these groups compared to those from smaller groups. Meetings like the PAGE provide the perfect audience for all –students, academics and industry colleagues – to network, exchange science and forge professional relationships. Inevitably, one of the common questions in this community is “Will you be presenting at the next PAGE meeting?”
I attended the PAGE 2024 meeting, from June 25-28, in the beautiful and historical city of Rome. This was the fourth PAGE meeting I was attending: The earlier three I attended as a doctoral student at the Freie Universitaet Berlin, with the most recent in 2019. This time around: 1) I was attending as a post-doctoral scholar from the Infectious Diseases Institute (Kampala, Uganda), 2) I was traveling for the conference from Uganda, and 3) I was attending the Applied Pharmacometrics Training pre-PAGE meeting followed by the PAGE meeting. My attendance of the combined pre-PAGE and PAGE meetings was supported by the Applied Pharmacometrics Training program, in which I have been a fellow for six months.
Increasing volume and diversity of scientific publications at the PAGE meeting
The most obvious differences between the PAGE meetings in 2019 versus 2024 was the higher number of attendees in 2024. The networking sessions and the poster presentations revealed a growing diversity in origin of conference attendees, from different academic institutions and industry from across the globe. The presentations (abstracts and oral sessions) showed an increase depth in novel methodologies relevant to quantitative pharmacology and their widening clinical applications. Physiologically-Based Pharmacokinetic modelling (PBPK) and Quantitative Systems Pharmacology (QSP) increasingly featured in PAGE 2024. Additionally, there has been a high integration of machine learning and artificial intelligence in quantitative pharmacology. Even for specialized quantitative research areas like lactation pharmacology, a field of my ongoing research interest, there was diverse work covering population PK and PBPK. My experience of the meeting did not differ much before / after my doctoral studies, with exception of the more rigorous scientific discussion and a wider network. The high numbers of attendees and publications almost guarantees that an attendee of any research interest will get useful feedback on their work. However, a useful problem in this setting is how one maximizes their learning experience in the face of all available (and often new) information! Of course all what is presented at the meeting remains online accessible after the meeting and one can always retrieve any interesting information, however it is useful to have an overview of the various topics presented during the meeting.
Contribution of African Scientists
For scientists from relatively smaller groups or those working on less commonly researched scientific questions, meetings like PAGE, The American Conference on Pharmacometrics (ACoP) and The World Conference of Pharmacometrics (WCoP) are crucial for catching-up with scientific developments around the specific research question. Of closer interest to me is the contribution of scientists from institutions in Africa in these meetings. The established pharmacometrics group at the University of Cape Town Pharmacometrics has always provided most of the pharmacometric research coming out of Africa. Fast growing groups like ours, Pharmacometrics group at IDI will follow suit, and increase the visibility of research within Africa. The major barriers for participation of African researchers in such international meeting include visa restrictions and financial support for travel and local subsistence in the host city. The challenge with visa restrictions is Embassy-specific and always difficult to anticipate the outcomes. However adequate supportive documentation from the conference and funders improves the chances for acceptance. Pharmacometrics Africa has supported many African scientists to attend these meetings. As the number of people studying pharmacometrics increases, there will be a greater need to seek alternative funding options to support them. For example, making sufficient provisions for travel budgets and more vigorously hunting for travel funding opportunities.