Building Global Partnerships in Genetics and Fetal Medicine

The 29th International Conference on Prenatal Diagnosis and Therapy took place at the Cape Town International Convention Centre in South Africa from 30 October 2025 to 2 November 2025.

Educational activities included plenaries and debates on emerging topics to diagnose and treat fetal conditions from early diagnosis to target fetal therapy.

60 speakers from around the world debated on how technologies to improve fetal precision medicine is failing despite high incidence of obstetric complications affecting women globally. There were exhibitions and an industry research showcase in partnership with ISUOG, NAFTNet and SASUOG to explore how innovations are advancing in fetal therapy.

Finalist Presentations by Early Career Researchers

One of the highlights were the two Finalist presentations by Dr Esme McPolin-Hall, Mia Crowther and Dr Natalia Munoz-Castro who were selected out of hundreds of abstracts for “best ECR presentation.” The inter-disciplinary team are working with Prof Andrew Prendergast who is the Director of the Zvitambo Institute for Maternal and Child Health Research in Zimbabwe, and Prof Anna David who is the Director of EGA Institute for Women’s Health at UCL. The team have been investigating how infection by HIV affects inflammation, mechanobiology and tissue strength leading to membrane rupture and preterm birth.

Dr Tina Chowdhury is leading a clinical trial investigating the impacts of air pollution on pregnancy and preterm birth in partnership with UCLH. The clinical, scientific and data engineers are working together to develop models of interventions that are relevant to low-income settings like Zimbabwe where women are affected by high rates of infection and preterm birth. The clinical study was presented by Dr Zara Arain who is an obstetrician developing methods in machine learning to predict preterm birth and won the "best presentation" award at Queen Mary's industry and technology ILF event.

Tina will chair the Fetal Membrane Society Virtual conference on Tuesday 2 December 2025 where 3 world-leading keynote speakers will present exciting work in "Experimental Models ", "Maternal & Fetal Physiology " and "From Big Data to Clinical Trials & Interventions".