Dear Friends. The recent news of the sad demise of Charles Lapière has overtaken events somewhat. Professor Lapière was a distinguished clinician-scientist who worked with Terence Ryan and others to initiate our society and then accepted the position of Founder President (1989-1991) (see Tribute in this issue). We invited him to present a plenary lecture at our last annual meeting in Southampton. This invitation was accepted and then passed on to his colleague, as Professor Lapière was not well enough to travel to the meeting. (The abstract of the presentation ‘The Matrix Metalloproteinases, from then to now’ presented by Professor Alain Colige, is reproduced in this issue). On behalf of all ETRS members, our best wishes are extended to his family.

Back on the ranch: the 17th Annual Meeting was held at the Botley Park Country Club, Southampton from 26-28 September 2007.¹ The meeting was successful based on feedback both in terms of the science, and the organisation. There was a full exhibition supported by fourteen companies. Figure 1 is a breakdown of delegates (243) who attended the days; a take-home message is that only 25% of our membership was present at the meeting.

There were over 140 presentations including a scintillating Keynote Address by Stephen Holgate that was matched for brilliance by plenary lectures on each of the three days. Stephen Holgate addressed the problems faced by scientists in health-care systems. His thoughts and observations were resonance with the recent experience of most.

The plenary lecture by Paul Martin, University of Bristol, was a master class on the science of presenting intricate details simply but with elegance. A critical audience was entertainingly informed. Thank you to all (Committee members, Organising Secretariat including Simon Richards and his team) for making this meeting a splendid success.

The symposium, workshop and short, sharp oral presentations of posters all worked very well. A large number of applications were received for the Young Investigator Awards (YIA). The YIA committee did a clinically efficient job of pre selecting three of these for a final arbitration from which Soma Meran from the University of Wales, Cardiff was awarded the top prize. Soma Meran is selected to present her work at the WHS meeting in April 2008 as agreed by ETRS and WHS.

The final session was more in the nature of a take-home lesson; senior colleagues spoke about the learning outcomes of their experience thereby giving helpful clues to the younger clinician and scientist. The session concluded with a brilliant response by Janice Bianchi (who trained as a Nurse) who enjoyed the meeting and was looking forward to joining the ETRS.

Some forty members attended the AGM. It was a wholly different style more in the nature of short presentations by Karin Scharffetter-Kochanek and then the rest of us. Each presentation was followed by questions. Hilde Beele, Treasurer, spoke about the working progress on our constitution while Marco Romanelli encouraged us to work more closely with others such as EWMA. This is a welcoming trend that augers well for wound healers (at the coal face, in the laboratory, in industry and so on). The AGM ended with a vote of thanks to Karin Scharffetter-Kochanek for her work as President (2005-07).

So the meeting is delivered, what’s next? I observed then and continue to puzzle over the fact that the greater majority of our members did not attend the meeting. Another observation that was supported by feedback received was that younger workers found the meeting exciting and informative. In the final run up to the meeting, it occurred to me that some 25 years ago papers on wound healing would be presented in a section within larger meetings of Dermatology or Surgery and so on. Now our Society has now come of age suggesting to me that wound healing and tissue repair are now recognised academic areas while the clinical problem is getting more visible by the day. We therefore need to engage colleagues working along the spectrum - that's the challenge.

As I complete this report, we have had the first frost of Autumn 2007. Last night, the pavements were littered with golden brown leaves - now these are covered with sharp frost. Soon it will be Christmas. My best wishes for the Festive Season.

Raj Mani
President