Prague Spring Symposium

MUDr. Štěpán Machač, Ph.D. was born in 1970. He graduated from the Palacký University of Medicine in Olomouc. From 1995 – 2003 he worked at the Gynaecology and Obstetrics Clinic of Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at Palacký University Olomouc and started to deal with infertility treatment. In 2006, he obtained a Ph.D. degree, after defending his dissertation on ovarian hyper stimulation syndrome and congenital thrombophilia. In the years 2006 – 2014, he worked at the Reprofit International clinic as the lead IVF physician for foreign patients. Since 2014 he has been acting as a head of the IVF Clinic in Olomouc. In 2018 he was appointed as a Future Life CMO. He has authored or co-authored more than 30 lectures and 40 articles in professional journals. In his work he focuses mainly on the issue of assisted reproduction, ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome and gamma donation.

Alessandro Conforti received his MD in 2009 and in 2010 became Clinical Visitor of the In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) Department of Hammersmith Hospital, London, UK, directed by Dr Stuart Lavery. During his specialization training from 2012 to 2013, he worked in the Minimally Invasive Therapy Unit & Endoscopy Training Centre at the Royal Free Hospital in London, UK, as Clinical Research Fellow, under the guidance of Consultant Gynaecologist Mr Adam Magos. During this period, he also worked as Clinical Research Fellow in the Fetal Medicine Unit at the Royal Free Hospital under the guidance of Head of Unit Mr Demetrios Economides. Dr Conforti specialized in obstetrics and gynaecology in 2015. In 2017, he received his PhD from the University of Naples “Federico II” in Naples, Italy, with a thesis on neuroscience and reproductive medicine focused on the role of genetic variants of gonadotropins and their receptors in controlled ovarian stimulation. Dr Conforti’s research interests include minimally invasive and reproductive gynaecological surgery, reproductive medicine, reproductive genetics, assisted reproductive technology, and oncofertility. He has served as an ad hoc reviewer for many international journals and is the author or co-author of several articles published in international peer-reviewed journals.

Andres Salumets is a biologist and biochemist. He completed his undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Tartu in 1995. In October 2003 he received his PhD at the University of Helsinki. Since 2010 he has been working as Professor of Reproductive Medicine at the University of Tartu. At 2020 he has been appointed as Professor of Reproductive Medicine at Karolinska Institutet. His research interests are related to endometrial receptivity, reproductive toxicology, preimplantation and prenatal genetic diagnosis and stem cell biology.

Dr. Capalbo received his Bachelor of Science degree in Biotechnology from University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ and his Ph.D. magna cum laude in Human Genetics at the Catholic University of Sacred Heart of Rome in 2011. Since 2008 Dr. Capalbo has been working as clinical embryologist at GENERA, Reproductive Medicine in Rome. Since then, his research has focused on preimplantation genetic testing and on the development of novel molecular biology techniques. From 2012-2017 he was co-founder and Laboratory Director at GENETYX, largest PGT program in Italy. From 2017 he is working in the board of R&D directors at Igenomix and as Laboratory Director for Igenomix Italy.

Dr. Jan Diblík, Ph.D. graduated from the 2nd Faculty of Medicine at Charles University and completed postgraduate doctoral studies in biomedicine at Charles University. He holds an attestation in the field of medical genetics. He gained experience in the Department of Biology and Medical Genetics of the 2nd Faculty of Medicine at Charles University and in the Center for Reproductive Medicine at the Motol University Hospital. He has been working as a physician at the Department of Medical Genetics at the GENNET since 2013.

Mgr. Jakub Horák, PhD. graduated from Masaryk University Brno and completed his postgraduate doctoral studies University of Tübingen. After eleven years of study and basic research in the field of molecular biology and genetics he started working at reproductive genetics diagnostic laboratory Repromeda Brno. He actively participated in the wider expansion of new methods and technologies of preimplantation genetic testing. Since 2015 he have continued as the director of the Repromeda laboratory. In 2020 Jakub was appointed Director for Preimplantation Genetic Testing at GENNET.

Joris Vermeesch, is chair of the department of human genetics and heading the Constitutional Cytogenetics unit of the Centre of Human Genetics. He is coordinating the genomic core Leuven. The laboratory has been pioneering applications for genome wide genetic analyses for preimplantation, prenatal and postnatal diagnosis. He developed methods for single cell CNV detection and addresses questions about the origins of chromosomal rearrangements and genomic instability by the genetic analysis of IVF embryos. The laboratory developed and translated novel methods for non-invasive prenatal and cancer testing.

Dr. Kaarel Krjutškov is a researcher and inventor in the field of genetic engineering at Competence Centre on Health Technologies (CCHT) and associate professor of molecular medicine at the University of Tartu. He received his doctorate in molecular diagnostics from the University of Tartu and has since worked at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and the University of Helsinki. His research in CCHT is focused on novel approaches for human infertility diagnostics and NIPT developments to implement it as the first round genetic screening.