The UGM Faculty of Pharmacy organized the 8th International Conference on Pharmacy and Advanced Pharmaceutical Sciences (ICPAPS 2023) and the 14th Annual Conference of the Indonesian Society for Cancer Chemoprevention (ISCC 2023).
The ICPAPS 2023 and the ISCC 2023 took place for three days, from November 3 to 5, 2023, at the Faculty of Pharmacy.
ICPAPS is a biennial event aimed at facilitating meetings of experts and knowledge sharing among pharmacists and pharmaceutical scientists. Meanwhile, the ISCC is a forum to present research and education in cancer chemoprevention.
This year’s broad theme of ICPAPS-ISCC focuses on pharmacy and pharmaceutical care for sustainable health care.
This theme is to address various research interests; hence, five symposiums were held on specific topics: pharmacology, pharmaceutical chemistry, and pharmaceutical biotechnology (PPCP); pharmacy education, social and administrative pharmacy, and clinical pharmacy (PESC); pharmacy & drug delivery systems (PDDS); herbal medicine and natural products (HMNP); and cancer chemoprevention (PKC).
“This forum is to bring together researchers, academics, students, practitioners in health institutions and industries, and policymakers in related fields from around the world to exchange and share experiences and findings about pharmacy, pharmaceutical science, and cancer chemoprevention,” said Professor Satibi, the Dean of the UGM Faculty of Pharmacy.
The hybrid conference brought several renowned speakers, including Dr. Hilda Ismail (UGM), Professor Klaas Poelstra (University of Groningen), Professor Sudibyo Martono (UGM), and Professor Subagus Wahyuono (UGM), Professor Verena M Dirsch (University of Vienna), Professor Barbro Melgert (University of Groningen), Professor Yoshitaka Hippo (Chiba CCRI), Professor Tao Liu (Children’s Cancer Institute Australia), Professor Edy Meiyanto (UGM), Dr. Yusuke Suenaga (Chiba CCRI), Dr. Herman Woerdenbag (University of Groningen), Dr. Yow Hui Yin (University of Malaya), Dr. Eelco Ruijter (VU Amsterdam), and Professor Atanas Atanasov (Medical University of Vienna).
“This activity is to update the development of pharmaceutical science and clinical pharmacy technology every two years. There were about 200 participants from several countries, but the majority were still from Indonesia. They were students, lecturers, practitioners, industry, and hospitals,” the dean said.
The speakers of this event presented materials orally or in poster form. As actors in the pharmacy field, they are expected to contribute to developing science and technology for health resilience.
This issue is raised because, post-pandemic, everyone felt that Indonesia needs resilience concerning drugs and raw materials for pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and disposable medical materials.
“All the speakers were interesting, such as from Groningen, who presented the development of nano-technology for pharmacy because some UGM Pharmacy alumni also developed research related to nano-technology,” he explained.
Dr. Hilda Ismail, Head of the Center for Pharmaceutical Industry Resilience Studies at UGM, raised research topics related to paracetamol. This is important, considering paracetamol is one of the government’s programs for drug raw material resilience.
Almost everyone uses paracetamol; unfortunately, the domestic pharmaceutical industry cannot synthesize it. The raw material for this drug is still imported, and this has an impact on some drugs that are highly needed by the public.
“Paracetamol is one of the priorities of the government. This is referred to in the Inter-University Development Research and a UGM program. President Joko Widodo mandated it to the UGM Faculty of Pharmacy a few years ago,” he added.
Author: Agung Nugroho