President's Message

July 2008 update to Safety Pharmacology Society (SPS) Members, Committee Members, Corporate Donors, and those attending our Annual Scientific and attending  our training and scientific ventures in Madison in September!

Firstly, on behalf of the SPS Board of Directors I'd like to remind you about our 8th Annual Scientific Meeting in Madison, Wisconsin. Hopefully you’ll agree with me that Rick Briscoe’s Program Committee have essentially completed and posted the scientific program about 3 months earlier than is traditional; we hope this means we have a record number of delegates attending this year. I’d draw to your attention the Symposium on Biologic and Safety Pharmacology: a regulatory perspective, and Biologics and Safety Pharmacology: A clinical perspective; we also have folks from the FDA taking valuable time away from their office to attend the meeting. I’m really looking forward to that side of the program, plus some novel scientific sessions to engage and inform the delegates and speakers alike!

If you have yet to do so, please take time to register and plan your travel and hotel needs to help you attend the Madison meeting. For the next few weeks or so, SPS we are still accepting Corporate donations for the meeting so please may I encourage potential donors to work with our Virginia Headquarters staff—they can help with your financial requirements and any details about the levels of sponsorship and what they relate to on our Web site during 2008, as well as at the meeting itself.

Also, the Board of Directors and myself would like to thank those Companies who are exhibiting or sponsoring the Society’s meeting in a great value-for-money, friendly location!

This year the Board of Directors have suggested and agreed to issue approximately quarterly highlights of our Board teleconferences—these are posted on the SPS Web site for our membership to view. 

Since our last face-to-face Board of Directors meeting in September, there has been an extra focus on defining the Safety Pharmacology Society’s strategic business plan over the next few years.  I was encouraged to prepare a first draft over the past few months and there is ongoing discussion about its next more polished version.  The 2008 SPS Board are very keen to reach out to new countries (e.g. in Asia) for venues for Scientific Meetings and for Continuing Education initiatives. We know we are in a very unique evolving and exciting discipline which is paramount in protecting human health globally. However we have to be careful that these new initiatives at least break-even for the Safety Pharmacology Society.

I very much look forward to seeing you all in September, if not before!!

Ian MacKenzie, Ph.D.

2008 Safety Pharmacology Society President