President's Message: The power of partnership

Published: 19 Oct 2022
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With the very hot summer now well behind us, I hope you all managed to have some time off from your busy schedules and are now reinvigorated for the many challenges facing us all as we move towards what could be a difficult winter.

I was sorry not to have met you during Pharmacology 2022 (P22) in Liverpool, but I understand that the meeting was a big success with some excellent scientific sessions. As some of you know I was unfortunately hospitalized and therefore unable to participate. I am pleased to let you know that I am now recuperating at home and slowly getting back to full health with the aid of pharmacology and rest. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Sir Mark Caulfield, our President Elect, for standing in at short notice to cover my responsibilities during P22 and indeed more widely across the BPS whilst I have been away. In addition, I would like to thank Cherry Wainwright as our Meetings Vice President for her support, along with the BPS Team for putting together such an excellent meeting in Liverpool. 
We were pleased to see many of our members in attendance at P22, though we understand many also couldn’t make the meeting. We at BPS will look into why this was the case, given the excellent scientific programme on offer, and welcome all feedback about your participation in P22.

Pharmacology 2022, like much of the work of our Society, is enhanced by working in partnership with other organisations, and I was pleased that we were able to welcome the British Toxicology Society to our meeting in Liverpool for a joint symposium on therapeutic targeting of Nrf2. This is, we hope, will be the start of a long-term partnership to bring the safety pharmacology and toxicology community closer to the Society.

Our partnership with ELRIG goes from strength to strength and recently we organised an excellent session on Drug Discovery and Development in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) at ELRIG’s ‘Drug Discovery 2022’ meeting in London. This session brought together a number of internationally recognised speakers, including a number of BPS members, who are working in the field of COPD to present state of the art lectures on the current challenges and opportunities in this important therapeutic area.

We’re excited to be co-hosting a meeting with the Physiological Society on 20-21 November 2022. ‘Lungs: More Than an Organ of Gas Exchange’ will be a fantastic opportunity to find out about the latest research in the respiratory field, and I hope you’ll join us. There are opportunities for presenting your research at this event and abstract submissions have been extended to 30 October 2022. Registrations close on 7 November 2022 and because there is limited capacity at the venue, I would encourage you to register as early as possible.

Our Guest Society partnership with the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET) means that we will each host a lecture, symposium or sponsorship at our respective annual meetings until at least 2028. We welcomed ASPET members to P22 a few weeks ago, and we have had a session accepted – ‘Ion Channels go Vegetarian: Insights into Modulation by Plant Extracts’ - for the upcoming ASPET annual meeting on 18-21 May 2023, in St Louis, Missouri.
 
I was also pleased that we could welcome IUPHAR delegates to P22 in Liverpool and we continue to have active discussions with how BPS can continue to work with them and to support their important international activities. 

As part of this interaction we are of course continuing to look ahead to 2023 and are excited that the registration portal and the abstract submission portal for the World Congress of Pharmacology, which will take place in Glasgow on 2-7 July, are now launched.

This promises to be an exciting event with speakers and delegates from around the globe and will provide an opportunity to hear many excellent distinguished speakers across all branches of pharmacology, to present your latest research findings and of course have the chance to meet many friends and colleagues from across the world. We are also particularly pleased to bring ELRIG on board as a partner for this meeting, who are helping us secure corporate sponsorship and encourage registrations. I strongly encourage you to all register for this meeting and look forward to seeing a good number of abstracts being submitted by our members.

Finally, I would like to personally thank Professor Amrita Ahluwalia for her leadership as Editor-in-Chief of the British Journal of Pharmacology (BJP) over the previous seven years, as her term comes to an end later this year. Amrita has overseen the journal going from strength to strength and, along with major contributions from the Editorial Board, has ensured the BJP is one of the leading global pharmacology journals - and of course the income generated by the BJP plays a major role in supporting the many activities of our Society. 

I would also like to take this opportunity to welcome Professor Peter Ferdinandy as the new Editor-in Chief of the BJP. I am confident he will continue to develop the journal and build on the excellent work of Amrita and her team. Many congratulations Peter on your appointment, and on behalf of the BPS I wish you every success going forward. 

As ever I would welcome any feedback from members on how we might improve our interactions with the wider national and international pharmacology community, or any suggestions on what you would like the Society to do to support our members. I look forward to hearing from you and to hopefully catching up with many of you in person at the AGM in December.

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Professor Clive Page OBE

https://www.bps.ac.uk/getmedia/664834c6-0139-472c-adea-50df5178704e/Sorrel-Bunting.jpg.aspx?width=503&height=334

Clive Page is a Professor of Pharmacology at King’s College London and President of the British Pharmacological Society.


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