In Vivo

First, a confession. Yes, the four sleep-deprived editors hunched behind glowing laptops in the Opryland Resort's Cyber Café last month were indeed from this publication. Normally, our mumbled conversations about punctuation and grammar take place before 11:00 pm—and under slightly lower systemic levels of caffeine, sugar, and sushi.

Maribel Rios

Our goal was to provide exclusive daily e-newsletters covering the AAPS annual meeting in Nashville. We would attend technical sessions, walk the showroom floor, and report on the day's events. Before arriving we already had a well-tested product (our weekly ePT newsletter), the tools we needed, and a solid plan. Simple enough.

Or so we thought.

In a basic sense, we quickly learned about the complexities of in vivo experimentation. And although all of us were experienced writers and veterans of many conferences, this project was a completely different animal.

Every evening, our questions echoed those we had heard during the sessions—about dissolution testing, particle-size measuring, and equipment qualification: What is the best method? How do I verify the data? What do I report? When is the deadline? What's the right way to make changes? The answers also resembled those that were given in the sessions. Some were specific and easy to answer, while others were simply "You'll have to try it and see what works best for you."

At the end of the day (literally), we turned everything in, relieved, hoping it would be well received but knowing it would most likely undergo some degree of scrutiny—then we'd start all over the next day.

Hats off to R&D scientists everywhere.

Maribel Rios is the senior editor of Pharmaceutical Technology, mrios@advanstar.com