Preface

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The 2009 meeting of the International Federation of Placenta Associations (IFPA Meeting 2009) was organised by the Australian and New Zealand Placenta Research Association (ANZPRA) at the Adelaide Convention Centre in Adelaide, Australia. IFPA comes down under just once every six years so the meeting provided a wonderful opportunity for 255 placentologists representing each continent except Antarctica to gather in this beautiful city bounded by the sea, the Adelaide Hills and the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale wine districts to the north and south.

The theme of the conference was Placenta: Key to Pregnancy Success. The wide variety of topics discussed demonstrated just how important the placenta is in myriad ways. The meeting opened with an Australian flavour with Keynote lectures from Professors Marilyn Renfree (University of Melbourne, Australia) and Jenny Graves (Australian National University, Canberra, Australia). Professor Renfree discussed the intriguing reproductive strategy of marsupials and showed how marsupials do indeed have placentae, although most often choriovitelline, and that their offspring are born in a highly altricial state and undertake most of their development postnatally in a pouch, relying on a very sophisticated system of lactation. Professor Graves spoke on the evolution of sex-determining genes and intrigued the audience with her prophecy that the diminishing number of genes on the Y chromosome indicate that the whole chromosome will disappear within 6 million years.

The four symposia were on Sex and the Placenta, Prediction of Adverse Pregnancy Outcome, Placenta, IUGR and Programming and Trophoblast Endometrial Interactions. There were 12 scientific workshops on a variety of cutting edge topics discussed in the Workshop Report in this issue. Thanks to the Workshop Chairs and to Dr Gendie Lash (Newcastle University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK) for compiling this report. The IFPA Award in Placentology, which is given every two years, was this year awarded to two placentologists for their contributions to the field, namely Professor Berthold Huppertz from the Medical University of Graz in Austria and Associate Professor Claire Roberts from the Robinson Institute at the University of Adelaide in Australia.

At IFPA Meeting 2009 there was a strong emphasis on presentations by early to mid career researchers and the 114 New Investigators were additionally well served by three excellent lunchtime workshops on Career Development (Dr Amanda Sferruzzi-Perri, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, and IFPA ECR Representative), How to Write a Paper (Professor Leslie Myatt, University of San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas, USA) and How to Write a Fellowship Application (Professor Greg Rice, Baker IDI, Melbourne, Australia). The Elsevier Trophoblast Research Award lecture was presented by Dr Tamara Tilburgs formerly of the University of Leiden (Leiden, The Netherlands) but now at Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA). The 12 finalists for the Elsevier New Investigator Oral Award gave Professor Larry Chamley (University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand) and his judging panel a very difficult job. Alex Umbers from the University of Melbourne (Melbourne, Australia) was finally given the award with Edward Chuong from Stanford University (Palo Alto, California, USA) highly commended. The Elsevier Trophoblast Research Award for the best poster in 2009 was judged by a panel of judges led by Professor Colin Sibley (University of Manchester, Manchester UK) and given to Craig Park from the Royal Victoria Hospital (Barrie, Ontario, Canada). I greatly appreciate the hard work that all the judges for each award contributed.

There were 44 YW Loke New Investigator Travel Award recipients who each benefitted from the generosity of Professor YW (Charlie) Loke. As Conference Chair and on behalf of the IFPA Executive Committee, I wholeheartedly thank Professor Loke for his unerring support of New Investigators without which many of these young placentologists would be unable to attend IFPA meetings. In addition, there were 6 NIH Travel Awards and 6 ANZPRA Awards for New Investigators to assist their attendance at the meeting.

I am grateful to the Program Organising Committee and particularly acknowledge the great support provided to me by Professor Vicki Clifton (University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia), Professor Colin Sibley (University of Manchester, Manchester UK) and Professor Leslie Myatt (University of San Antonio, San Antonio, USA) whose contributions were essential to the success of the meeting. I am also grateful to the abstract reviewers who gave significant time to carefully review the abstracts. I also appreciate the sponsorship offered by the School of Paediatrics and Reproductive Health (University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia) the Network for Genes, Environment and Development (NGED, NHMRC and ARC Research Network, Australia), the Research Centre for Reproductive Health (Robinson Institute, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia) and Elsevier for sponsoring awards and providing secretariat support. I am also most appreciative of Professor Anthony Carter, the Editor of Trophoblast Research, for his enormous contributions to placentology and to getting the placenta message across through reporting IFPA meetings to the scientific community. Regrettably, Anthony was unable to attend this year's meeting but we look forward to seeing him next year in Chile. Finally I wish to thank Nina Cosgrove (Elsevier, Oxford, UK) and her team for the huge amount of work they put into the meeting. Her contribution was invaluable.

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Conflict of interest 

The authors do not have any potential or actual personal, political, or financial interest in the material, information, or techniques described in this paper.