The Early Years

Founded in 1990, the first official meeting of the Society of Noninvasive Imaging in Drug Development (SNIDD) was held June 17-19, 1991 at the Inner Harbor Sheraton in Baltimore. The founding directors had the vision to recognize the importance of noninvasive imaging techniques as powerful research tools for scientists involved in drug discovery, research and development. They identified a need in the pharmaceutical industry (pharma) for an organization that embraced all imaging modalities and included all those instrumental in the drug development decision-making process. With that foresight, the objective of the founding directors was to bring together members of the pharma, academia and government to share information and focus efforts on how to increase the efficiency of drug discovery and development programs by providing valuable information that would enhance the science to bring significant drugs to patients sooner and also help reduce timelines and costs.

Attendance at this meeting by members of the pharma greatly surpassed expectations which confirmed that the Society leadership had correctly identified a major need within drug discovery and development. The curiosity expressed by pharma in alternative biomarkers was very real as were the needs to better understand the advantages and disadvantages of the various imaging modalities. Pharma was interested in seeing data to help support selection criteria needed to identify the best modality to optimize a specific drug development program.

Proceeds from this inaugural meeting provided the funding required to establish SNIDD as a not-for-profit educational organization and helped SNIDD launch its website and create its first publication, Nuclear Imaging in Drug Discovery, Development and Approval. Birkhäuser, Boston, 1993. In 1998 the Directory of PET Centers in North America was published.

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