From 31 March to 2 April, Voronezh State University hosted the 8th International Conference on Pharmaceutical Education 2022. The subject of this year’s conference was “Prospects and means of improving pharmaceutical education. Current issues in the development and trials of new medicines”.
On 31 March, at the official opening of the conference, welcome speeches were given the participants by Dmitry Endovitsky, Rector of VSU, Elena Chupandina, First Vice-Rector and Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs, and Aleksey Slivkin, Dean of the Faculty of Pharmaceutics.
The plenary meeting started with the report on “Formation of practical competencies in pharmacognosy through distance learning” by Professor Natalia Gurina, DSc in Biology, Dean of the Pharmaceutical Faculty of the Belarusian State Medical University (the report was presented remotely). Professor Irina Gravel, DSc in Pharmacy, Professor at the Department of Natural Science in Pharmacy of Sechenov University, made an in-person presentation on “Using the results of scientific research in the educational process for the discipline “Pharmacognosy”. Tatiana Degrave, Clinical Research Advisor at OOO Bionorica, reported on “Antibiotic resistance pandemic. Prospects for phytotherapy”.
On March 31, the conference offered the following scientific and methodological panels: “Continuous Pharmaceutical Education” (hosted by Associate Professor Anna Buzlama, DSc in Medicine, and Associate Professor Elena Boldyreva, PhD in Pharmacy), “Good Pharmacy Practice and Principles of its Implementation” (hosted by Professor Elena Chupandina, DSc in Pharmacy, and Maria Kurolap, PhD in Pharmacy), “Phytoneering” (hosted by Professor Aleksey Slivkin, DSc in Pharmacy, and Associate Professor Olga Trineeva, DSc in Pharmacy), and “Development and Trials of New Medicines” (hosted by Professor Khidmet Shikhaliev, DSc in Chemistry). Over the course of the panels, reports were made by pharmacists, biologists, chemists, and practitioners from Voronezh, Moscow, the Moscow Region, Irkutsk, Yekaterinburg, Pyatigorsk, and North Ossetia.
On 1 April, there was a panel led by Associate Professor Svetlana Provotorova, PhD in Pharmacy, where postgraduate, residency, and undergraduate students from Voronezh, Moscow, Saratov, St. Petersburg, Ufa, Krasnodar, and Nalchik reported, both in-person and remotely. Students, residents, and postgraduate students noted that it was exciting to share their scientific achievements and experience with representatives of other universities in Russia and abroad, to learn how the educational and research processes were organised at other universities.
At the round table, which concluded the conference, the participants discussed issues related to the production of pharmaceuticals in Russia, topical aspects of the provision of pharmaceuticals to people, as well as the prospects for import substitution in the field of the production of essential medicines and substances. It was noted that Russia could certainly provide its citizens with drugs and medical devices of domestic production.
