At this week’s PAT/QbD meeting, sponsored by FDA and the University of Rhode Island’s College of Pharmacy, there was no question that the speaker everyone was waiting to hear from was Ajaz Hussain, former PAT team leader, Sandoz executive and now VP at Philip Morris International.

He burst energetically up to the podium, briefly recapping the history of why PAT was advanced. At the time, he said, FDA was resisting ICH Q8, although Europe and Japan were embracing it.

Last week, Gawayne Mahboubian-Jones, one of the key thought leaders of the pharmaceutical PAT movement, left a position at Optimal Industrial Automation, whose SynTQ software is finding more users in life sciences, to join Philip Morris International as Program Manager, Excellence in Science and Design.