The History of the Biopharmaceutical Section of the ASA

• Activity Number: 483
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 6, 2014 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Committee on ASA Archives and Historical Materials
• Author(s): Maria Matilde Sanchez-Kam*+ and Dionne Price and Amit Bhattacharyya
• Companies: Arena Pharmaceuticals and FDA and GlaxoSmithKline
• Keywords: Biopharm Section ; History

Abstract

The Biopharmaceutical Section of the American Statistical Association was established in 1968 as a subsection of the Biometrics Section. It was initially called the Pharmaceutical Subsection and was ASA's first subsection. After 12 years of being a subsection and due to the tremendous growth in membership, it became a Section of the ASA in 1980.

The Biopharmaceutical Section is now one of the most active sections of the ASA. The Section annually sponsors the FDA/Industry Statistics Workshop which has been successful at uniting statisticians from the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry, allowing for scientific discussions of statistics applied to drug development. The Section has also continued to offer members valuable benefits such as web-based training series, contributed paper awards and contributed poster awards. In this presentation, we will highlight the milestones and accomplishments of the Biopharmaceutical Section in the last 46 years.