Webinar series 2023

Although we recently celebrated the 40th birthday of the world's first child conceived through IVF, its beginnings go back much earlier. Register to this webinar and find out everything about the history of IVF.

How do chromosome errors influence pregnancy loss, fertility, and congenital disorders in humans? The talk will cover the sex-specific aspects of meiosis in human females and the origins of aneuploidies. Chromosome errors in human eggs follow a U shape with age and we will discuss how this emerges and how it influences pregnancy loss.

In young women with cancer diseases as well as for social freezing, cryopreservation and ovarian tissue transplantation are emerging as effective methods for preserving fertility and restoring ovarian endocrine function.

Embryo culture conditions have evolved significantly since the birth of Louise Brown in 1978. In the early days of human IVF embryos were cultured in rather simple culture media in the presence of serum and the absence of amino acids. Through the analysis of embryo nutrition and metabolism, combined with the analysis of oviduct and uterine fluids, the media used became more physiological, and with the advent of sequential media blastocyst culture became a reality. The future of embryo culture holds great promise with the potential to supplement media with antioxidants and growth factors. 

During antral follicle growth, androgen production, follicular atresia and dominance remain among the most intriguing and yet least understood phenomena. The "heteromer hypothesis," a receptor-receptor interaction, explains how gonadotropin receptors transmit death and life signals, mediating steroidogenesis, apoptosis and dominant follicle maturation.

In recent years, new knowledge about the role of the endometrium in implantation has emerged and several dysfunctions that may underlie recurrent implantation failures have been characterized, opening the possibility of new targeted therapeutic approaches.

Recurrent pregnancy loss can be caused by several aspects, such as anatomical defects of the uterus, chromosomal errors, endometrial dysfunction or autoimmune disorders. Future research should investigate the pathogenesis of recurrent pregnancy loss to develop adequately medical interventions.

July 2020 marked the 30th anniversary of the first pregnancies and live births following IVF, embryo biopsy and single cell genetic analysis in couples at risk of X-linked diseases. Since then, preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), or preimplantation genetic testing for monogenic disease (PGT-M), as it has recently been renamed, has become well established as a valuable alternative to prenatal diagnosis for a wide range of inherited conditions and extended to chromosome abnormalities including aneuploidy and structural rearrangements. Today, there have been major advances in all aspects of preimplantation genetics that have revolutionised our ability to interrogate the genetics of human gametes and embryos.

Polygenic risk scoring in IVF embryo selection is a new approach which demonstrates significant relative risk reduction of several common diseases including diabetes, cancer, and heart disease.  A review of existing literature, molecular genetic methodologies, common misconceptions, and ethical considerations will be presented. 

In human oocytes, alterations in the mechanism of spindle assembly and  age-related changes in chromosome and kinetochore architecture contribute to a gradual increase in aneuploidy levels.

Blastocoel morphogenesis is emerging as a complex biophysical event, involving cell division patterns together with physical principles that remain still poorly understood. 

In ART, embryo culture still relies on in vitro systems that, despite advances in terms of culture conditions and media, remain suboptimal. New microfluidic devices compatible with embryo culture can promote blastocyst formation, growth and hatching.

Although, in recent decades, IVF laboratories have undergone substantial renovation, much remains to be done in the development of technology and processes. The work of the embryologist will be increasingly integrated with the automatized work of machines supported by artificial intelligence. 

The recent development of molecular biology techniques (e.g., CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing) has opened the possibility to manipulate the genome of both somatic and germ cells. This webinar will highlight critical aspects of the use these technologies.

Aneuploidy is extremely common in human embryos and is one of the main causes of unsuccessful IVF cycles. Aneuploidy in embryos mostly originates from oocyte meiotic segregation errors, although post-zygotic errors, causative of chromosomal mosaicism in human blastocysts, may also occur. NGS has been suggested as an improved technology to report chromosomal mosaicism in trophectoderm biopsies. However, the use of subjective thresholds for mosaicism diagnosis has generated inconsistency across laboratories, with mosaicism prevalence estimates ranging from 2 to 40%.  As a matter of fact, to date, reporting mosaicism in PGT-A involved undeniable issues for the clinical management of PGT-A cycles and no clinical utility.

The study of embryonic development through time-lapse systems coupled with automated decision-making systems is being proposed as a powerful strategy for evaluating embryos.