Down On the Pharm in New York City

With 950 exhibitors and four concurrent conferences, Interphex 2004, March 16-18 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City, may become the pharmaceutical industry's largest and best-known annual conference and exhibition.

The event, says show promoters, takes place at the center of "Pharm Country" which encompasses New Jersey's "Cure Corridor," the New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut bioscience communities, and Massachusetts' "Genetown." Interphex continues to grow and has evolved into a major conference that now covers every step of drug development and manufacturing.

Formerly focused on production and packaging of pharmaceuticals, the new Interphex is said to be the only place the entire industry can now gather under one roof. The event, say promoters, attracts an international audience from at least 40 of the top 50 global pharmaceutical companies and exhibitors from most major industry vendors. In addition to process manufacturing and packaging, the show now covers drug discovery and development, outsourcing and contract services, and information technology. These key segments of the industry are covered by four concurrent conferences, including:

Interphex 2003

PharmaManufacturing

, delivering large-scale pharmaceutical processing and packaging solutions that encompass automation & process controls, batching systems/equipment, packaging equipment and supplies, processing equipment, tableting/capsule fillers, validation, and plant equipment.

PharmaIT

, offering information technology solutions that help minimize costs, improve enterprise-wide information access and gain a competitive advantage. Exhibits cover the range of pharma-IT needs, including hardware and peripherals, grid computing, networking and infrastructure, systems integration, customer relationship management, eCommerce, database/data storage business/manufacturing applications.

PharmaDiscovery

, providing discovery teams with access to the drug discovery tools and technologies that help them to bring new drugs to market more quickly and efficiently. the discovery-focused event includes industry-leading exhibits from discovery to Phase III clinical trials.

PharmaSourcing & Services

, the only event covering the full range of pharmaceutical outsourcing needs including analytical/testing, contract manufacturing, contract packaging, contract research, and contract engineering/construction.

Conferences & Education

To help enhance industry expertise, Interphex 2004 will offer attendees an array of keynote addresses, accredited courses, panel discussions and case-based presentations. Multi-track conferences address critical issues relating to drug design, testing, genetics, process technologies, validation, IT requirements, and FDA regulations.

Conferences are generally an hour long, scheduled and staggered concurrently each day of the show, 9:00 a.m.,4:30 p.m. Tuesday and 9:00 a.m.--3:30 p.m. Wednesday. On Thursday, there are three, 3-hour lectures, two scheduled for the morning 9:00 a.m.,noon and the last, 1:00 p.m.,3:30 p.m. Machine and process control system builders may be particularly interested in the following conferences:

Tuesday, March 16

9:00 a.m. , What to Expect from the FDA and How it Will Impact Pharmaceutical Manufacturing

1:00 p.m. , Water System Design Planning

1:00 p.m. , Open Forum: Continued Revision of the Sterile Manufacturing Guide

Wednesday, March 17

10:30 a.m. , Designing Containment Systems to Handle Potent Compounds in an API Kilo Lab

1:00 p.m. , Sterilization Validation of Like Equipment

1:00 p.m. , PAT: Process Analyzer Technology

Thursday, March 18

9:00 a.m. , Good Practice Guides for the Validation of Lab Systems

The full event and conference schedule can be previewed at the Interphex website: http://www.interphex.com.