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

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 ...