Preface for advances in pharmaceutical analysis 2018

The first International Symposium on Advances in Pharmaceutical Analysis (APA 2017) was started and held successfully in Wuhan University, China from November 17 to 19, 2017. The organization of the 2nd International Symposium on Advances in Pharmaceutical Analysis in the capital city of Flanders, Lille, was both an exciting and challenging project because the idea of an annual meeting between our two long cooperating Schools of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Wuhan and Lille, stood to reason.

With the support of Lille University, France and the international academic committee, the 2nd International Symposium on Advances in Pharmaceutical Analysis (APA 2018) was successfully held in the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences in Lille on July 12 and 13, 2018.

The purpose of APA 2018 was to bring together people from industry, universities and control laboratories to discuss the recent trends of analytical technologies from both a theoretical point of view and instrumental applications. APA 2018 covered all aspects of pharmaceutical analysis: pharmacy and cosmetics, new technologies, instrumentations and separation media for GC, HPLC and SFC, chirality, data processing (chemometrics and quality by design), mass spectrometry hyphenation, cosmetics, pharmaceutical quality control and drug safety, green analysis and applications and all modes of chromatography and electro-driven separation techniques.

In APA 2018 more than 100 attendees participated in the symposium including worldwide leading scientists and chief editors of several international journals from 9 countries, namely China, Belgium, Georgia, Germany, Japan, Poland, Switzerland, United States, and of course France. The scientific program included 30 plenary and keynote lectures and oral communications as well as more than 25 poster presentations. Three prizes from Bayer, Janssen and the Journal of Pharmaceutical Analysis rewarded the best poster communications during the closing ceremony.

We would like to warmly thank all the participants, organizations and people that supported APA 2018. The School of Pharmacy of Xi’an Jiaotong University in China was selected to organize the next APA Symposium on October 25-28, 2019.

Following the Symposium, the Journal of Pharmaceutical Analysis decided to propose a special issue dedicated to APA 2018 and we would like to sincerely thank all the authors who submitted their contributions and announce that the impact factor of the journal is now 4.44 (Clarivate Analytics, June 2019).

After the success of the first two symposia, we are convinced that many others will follow. We hope it will continue to be a place of fruitful discussions and exchanges between all members of the scientific community to promote analytical sciences in pharmaceutical and related fields.