It is both a pleasure and a privilege to serve as the President of the European Tissue Repair Society. I believe that the Society will develop from strength to strength over the next years and play a pivotal role in the development of repair and regeneration in both clinical and scientific settings.

Last year, Professor Keith Harding did an excellent job in steering the Society for the next few years by initiating and conducting a strategic review of the European Tissue Repair Society. The conclusions of that review are published in this Bulletin. I urge all members to read them. The European Tissue Repair Society is your Society. We now have a focussed set of guidelines and plans to develop the Society over the next few years. This review also provides a stimulus for further discussion and evolution. If there are things you believe the ETRS should be doing, that it currently is not, then please make suggestions. Equally, if there are things which we are doing that you think could be improved or dropped, again make your suggestions. Importantly, if you want to volunteer to undertake any activity, e.g., organise a Focussed meeting, then please do so. You will note that the review makes it easier for members to participate in this way, as we have specifically defined and enlarged the remit of the ETRS Business Office, run on behalf of the ETRS by George Cherry in Oxford.

Of particular note in the strategic review of the European Tissue Repair Society, I would highlight the following:

• The Society now has a clear mission, aims and objectives.
• The membership and status of the ETRS Board and Officers has been refined, specifically the term of the President and Past President have been extended and disassociated from organising the annual meeting. This starts in 2005.
• Specific terms of reference have been set up for the ETRS Business Office and a formal contract put in place, which will be subject to review in December 2003.
  

I believe that all of these developments will be of lasting benefit to the Society members and I thank Keith Harding for his hard work in initiating and concluding this review during his term of Presidency. For my part I have, and will, continue to ensure that the various changes are enacted in a timely fashion.

Following on from the success of an ETRS Focussed meeting on chronic wound healing in Vienna, the Board decided to establish some working groups as reported in our Board minutes of 13 September 2002. I am pleased to report that Professor Keith Harding has commenced the establishment of three groups to cover the following topics:

1. Setting standards for clinical trials,
2. Setting standards for clinical care,
3. Strengths and weaknesses of different laboratory models of wound healing.
   

Keith has now been asked to draw widely on the ETRS membership (and if appropriate non ETRS membership) to ensure appropriate expertise and nominate members for these working groups to be approved by the Board. The working groups will then commence their work and provide regular update reports to the Board. There will be a brief presentation of the progress of these ETRS working groups at our annual meeting starting in September this year in Amsterdam. Furthermore, Professor Harding has successfully negotiated with Johnson & Johnson that they will provide an unrestricted educational grant to the ETRS to support these working groups and it is hoped to hold a Focussed meeting on this topic during 2003.

You will also notice that your subscription reminder this year has a new format. Specifically we are asking everyone to fill in precisely their mailing address. The ETRS Business Office will then use this information to generate labels, which will be sent every quarter to Blackwell's to facilitate the shipment to the appropriate paying members of Wound Repair and Regeneration. Thus commencing in 2003, the ETRS Business Office will formally have the responsibility of compiling and keeping up to date the mailing list. This should correct an ongoing, irritating previous problem of paying members not receiving Wound Repair and Regeneration due to the failure of the publisher to update their mailing lists. It is, therefore, imperative that all members of the Society fill in this mailing section accurately and legibly. You should also note that your subscription runs from January to December of every year, irrespective of when you join or when you pay. If individuals join this Society later in the year, they will be sent the back issues of Wound Repair and Regeneration for that particular year.

In addition, we are collecting information on the research and clinical interests of ETRS members. This is so that we can compile a useful ETRS membership directory. It is also so that we can search that directory using key words in order, for example, to facilitate the appointment of individuals to ETRS working groups or to collect a group of members who are interested in a particular topic. Again please give us as much information as possible so that the directory, your directory, can be as useful as possible.

Finally, for those members subscribing to Wound Repair and Regeneration, it is possible to get online access to the journal, but this requires the Society to notify the publishers of your e-mail address. So it is important to complete your e-mail address, not just to receive communications from other members, but additionally so that you can get online access to the journal.

It is our intention, as normal, to publish this information about the membership in the ETRS Bulletin and of course on the ETRS website.

Wound Repair and Regeneration is always looking for high quality clinical and scientific papers. The journal is indexed in all the major indexing services, e.g., Index Medicus, Current Contents etc. The citation index for the journal is rising from the initial low point that characterises any recently started journal. The involvement of the ETRS in Wound Repair and Regeneration has never been greater. Finn Gottrup, Luc Teot and Keith Harding now occupy important editorial positions within the journal. This is your journal. Please help to make it even better by submitting your very best papers on a regular basis to Wound Repair and Regeneration. Equally, the ETRS Bulletin and website are there for your use. Please send George any appropriate contributions for either the Bulletin or the website. Again if you have any specific suggestions as to new features to add or improve, the Board will be happy to receive them.
A feature of the ETRS is its organisation of Focussed Meetings. We have now made the organisation of a Focussed meeting easier in that the Business Office has been given a formal role in supporting the local organiser in terms of logistics, organisation, administration etc. Therefore, if you are interested in suggesting a topic, a venue or indeed in organising a Focussed meeting, please send your suggestions, both to myself for consideration at the Board and to George Cherry in the Business Office for logistical purposes.

Our annual meeting will take place this year in Amsterdam from 21-23 September 2003. Dr Esther Middelkoop and her team have done a splendid job in drawing together an exciting preliminary programme and an excellent conference venue. Please support them by attending and participating in the ETRS annual meeting.

Equally, the European Tissue Repair Society is fully committed to the exciting World Wound Healing meeting, which will be organised in Paris from 8-13 July 2004 by Professor Luc Teot, who will be President of the ETRS at that time. This will be the 2004 annual meeting for the ETRS. It will also be the largest, most comprehensive gathering of wound healing researchers and clinicians from around the world. We are doing everything possible to make this a truly spectacular meeting. We need your participation. We are fully represented on the conference programme planning and every other major committee. If there are any topics or speakers that you would particularly like to hear, please send your suggestions to me and I will ensure that they are considered by the Programme Committee. If there are any particular topics or innovations, e.g., practical workshops etc. that you would like again, send your suggestions.

2003 promises to be another exciting and interesting year in the important, rapidly advancing fields of wound and tissue repair and regeneration. The 2003 Gordon Conference, probably one of the premier scientific meetings in wound healing, is taking place for the first time in Europe, in Italy during the first week in June 2003. Equally, The Royal Society in London is organising a special meeting on Repair and Regeneration on 24-25 September 2003, immediately following the ETRS meeting in Amsterdam. That fact that these two prestigious scientific bodies are organising meetings in repair and regeneration is a healthy sign for our field and the fact that both of them are occurring in Europe is an excellent endorsement of our strong scientific and clinical positions in these fields.

The European Tissue Repair Society is committed to being the premier basic and clinical scientific society in repair and regeneration. Please play your part by contributing in any way you can, both to the field and to the Society's future development. I wish you a prosperous and productive 2003.

Professor Mark WJ Ferguson
President, European Tissue Repair Society