Santosh Kumar, PhD, professor and assistant dean of the UTHSC College of Pharmacy, coordinated the Society on NeuroImmune Pharmacology’s 27th annual scientific conference in New Delhi, India. Dr. Kumar is the 2023 president of the society.
The conference featured eight plenary/special lectures, 53 symposium speakers, 70 posters, and 164 attendees.
“The first president of the society, Dr. Burt Sharp, was from UTHSC,” said Dr. Kumar. “Now in its 27th year, the society has another UTHSC professor as its president.”
Dr. Kumar opened the conference by delivering a lecture titled, “The Past, Present, and Future of the Society on NeuroImmune Pharmacology.” He highlighted the society’s history, its vision, and inspired the audience, especially the new generation of scientists, to focus on self-engineering with regard to physical and mental well-being to help create healthy epigenetic signatures.
In addition to the conference plenary talk, Dr. Kumar delivered a lecture titled, “Nanomedicine: Drug Delivery for NeuroHIV.” This lecture discussed a novel drug delivery approach to enhance the therapeutic levels of antiretroviral drugs and nutraceuticals in the brain. This is important because most antiretroviral drugs do not enter the brain to therapeutic levels, and thus, HIV persistence in the brain causes NeuroAIDS.
The conference also included scientific presentations from other UTHSC professors, such as Anna Bukiya, PhD, professor in the Department of Pharmacology, Addiction Science, and Toxicology, Ted Cory, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Translational Science, and Bhupesh Singla, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences.
The conference also included a panel discussion, titled, “Roadway to independence and shielding the mid-career saturation.” The panelists included Dr. Bukiya.