The American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) will hold its 2026 PharmSci 360 meeting October 25 to 28 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans. The event is the association’s flagship annual gathering, drawing thousands of scientists from across academia, industry, and government.
AAPS, which counts roughly 7,000 members, positions PharmSci 360 as a meeting that pairs the scale of a large scientific conference with the focus of a smaller specialist forum. Its programming is built on five tracks that follow the drug development process, so attendees can concentrate on a single track or move across any of them depending on the problems they are trying to solve.
The program runs across tracks that follow the development pipeline, including Preclinical, Clinical, and Translational Sciences; Formulation and Delivery; Manufacturing and Analytical Characterization; and Bioanalytics, plus an Innovator Curated Track built around research integrity and open science. The keynote lineup gives each track a concrete anchor. In Formulation and Delivery, Purdue’s Lynne Taylor makes the case for amorphous solid dispersions in the oral delivery of next-generation drugs, and the University of Macau’s Defang Ouyang traces the past, present, and future of AI for drug delivery. On the characterization side, the University of Connecticut’s Diane Burgess (a past AAPS president) headlines with a talk on understanding complex parenteral products, and digiM’s Shawn Zhang presents microstructure-based predictive drug development on the closing day.
AI and modeling are a recurring theme. Sessions pair machine learning with mechanistic modeling in formulation, apply AI to predictive manufacturing and product intelligence, and bring automation into the bioanalytical lab through a symposium on clinical sampling and BA lab AI. Translational science gets a timely hook in Eli Lilly’s Maria Posada leading a hot-topic session on GLP-1 agonists and the gastric-emptying interactions that can reshape drug absorption. Bookending the meeting are an opening plenary from Julie Gerberding of the Foundation for the NIH and a closing plenary from David Berry.
Event at a glance
- What: AAPS 2026 PharmSci 360
- When: October 25 to 28, 2026
- Where: Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, New Orleans
- Host: American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists
Filed Under: PharmSci360
