The 98th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics

Abstract

The 98th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics was held on March 5 - 8, 1997. Over 850 researchers and clinicians pre-registered for this meeting. Papers presented at the conference focused on new observations. Firstly, novel therapeutic agents were discussed, then compounds that represent standard therapy for a number of different disease states were addressed. State of the art lectures provided concise updates on the status of a number of different issues. The following is a summary of some of the highlights and presentations at the conference. This summary is divided into four sections. Section 1 focuses on the Public Policy Debate on the ethics and utility of the placebo-controlled trial. Part 2 is a summary of the current status of gene therapy with particular reference to cystic fibrosis treatment. Part 3 is a summary of data on two recently approved compounds (donepezil and zafirlukast). The last part of this article discusses the results of drug therapy in two different disease states (benign prostatic hypertrophy and migraine).