Webinars

IETS members have one month of exclusive access to recordings before it will be made available to the public.

Equine somatic cell nuclear transfer: past, present, and future

Keys to IVP Success in Dairy: Ideal Follicular and Culture Environment - June 7,2023

This webinar features Daniela Demetrio, from RuAnn Genetics, and Marc-André Sirard, with the Université Laval. We hope you will join us on Wednesday, June 7, to hear these two fantastic talks.

Daniela Demetrio, DVM

Daniela Demetrio received her DVM in 1999 and her master’s degree in animal reproduction in 2006 from Sao Paulo State University, Brazil. Her passion for bovine embryo production started in 2000, when she learned to transfer embryos and flush cows in a Brazilian embryo transfer (ET) center. Her first exposure to in vitro embryo production was in 2002 during a training at the National Livestock Breeding Center in Japan. Demetrio received the prize for the best research study in applied science from the Brazilian Embryo Technology Society in 2006 for her work comparing pregnancy results for AI and ET in Holstein cows.

In 2006, Demetrio and her husband Julio were invited to set up RuAnn’s in vitro fertilization (IVF) lab in Riverdale, California. She obtained her California veterinary license in 2011 and American Embryo Transfer Association certification in 2012. She was the chair of the AETA Statistical Information Committee from 2016 to 2022, a member of the AETA Board of Directors since 2021, and currently serves as AETA’s vice president.

As director of the RuAnn Genetics Bovine Embryo Transfer Program, Demetrio is responsible for the production and transfer of approximately 10,000 Holstein, Jersey, and Angus embryos per year, for in-house use, to other local farmers, and to be exported worldwide. Demetrio has transferred more than 65,000 embryos and flushed over 8,500 donors. Practical aspects of her work have been presented at AETA, IETS, and other international meetings.

Marc-André Sirard

Marc-André Sirard graduated in veterinary medicine in 1981 from the University of Montreal. He went into large animal practice before completing his PhD at Laval University in 1986 and has spent all his professional life working in IVF, using a laparoscopic approach to perform IVF in cattle and obtaining the first test-tube calves in 1985 using a clinically usable approach. During his post-doctoral studies in the United States, Sirard co-developed a method to produce bovine embryos by the hundreds using oocytes recovered from post-mortem cows. He came back to Québec in 1987 and obtained an industrial chair to work on bovine oocytes and sperm in 1990.

Sirard founded the Centre de Recherche en Biologie de la Reproduction in 1995, which has grown to include more than 100 people today. He obtained a senior Canadian research chair in 2000, on genomics applied to reproduction, and has created an international effort to define the normal genomic program in early mammalian embryos, which became an NSERC strategic network, EmbryoGENE, in 2008.

He has published more than 325 scientific papers and has been invited to give more than 100 invited lectures at international meetings. His work has demonstrated the value of controlled stimulation of follicle-stimulating hormone to obtain developmentally competent oocytes in cattle. His current research activities focus on the epigenetic mechanism allowing information transfer from one generation to the next. He has been a member of IETS since its first meeting in 1984, organized the IETS meeting in 1999 (Quebec City, Canada), received the Pioneer award in 2018, and has recently served on the Board of Governors (2020-2023).

Challenges for the development of ART for conservation of endangered cats - November 9, 2022

Jason completed his B.S. in Zoology at Michigan State University and a M.S. from Ohio State University. He received his Ph.D. from Purdue University, where his dissertation focused on oocyte metabolism and its effects on embryonic development in pigs and goats. After completing his Ph.D., Jason was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden’s Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife CREW where he began the development of a feline-specific culture medium and initiated research programs for black-footed cats and sand cats. Jason worked at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Dept. of Comparative Biosciences and at the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine before coming to Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium in 2016. Ongoing research projects include domestic cat oocyte maturation and embryo culture, collection of sperm from wild black-footed cats, investigating the effects of diet on sperm quality in cats, and sperm banking in tigers.

In vitro embryo production in buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) species: Potentials and constraints - October 18, 2022

Adoption of Microfluidics Webinar - September 27, 2022

This webinar will present a microfluidic approach for culturing murine embryos in vitro. The technological challenges of introducing the microfluidic method in IVF protocols in laboratories and potential techniques to optimize the control of the microenvironment will be discussed.

Virginia Pensabene has a background in electronics and biomedical engineering. She focused on micro- and nanotechnologies as a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Micro-BioRobotics of the Italian Institute of Technologies and the Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Biosystems Research and Education. In 2017 she moved with a Marie Curie Fellowship from a research assistant professor position at Vanderbilt University to the University of Leeds, where she is now associate professor of electronics and biomedical engineering. After working as co-investigator for large US projects to design new organs-on-a-chip models and collaborating with world experts in reproduction and infectious diseases, she is now focused on innovative technologies to support fertility treatments and the identification of causes and origins of miscarriage and preterm birth. She has published in the main peer-reviewed journals in the field (36 papers, max cit. 372, h-index 21), established collaboration with colleagues in embryology and fertility, received International recognition, and attracted funding from NC3Rs, MRC, EU H2020, Grow Med Tech, and EPSRC. She set up her current research group, aiming to inspire PhD and MS students to creatively work with and translate ideas into entrepreneurial activities (five patents, scientific lead of IVFmicro, founder and CEO of WinMedical s.r.l.).

Porcine In Vitro Embryo Production Webinar - July 6, 2022

Porcine In Vitro Embryo Production: Current Progress and Future Prospects.

 

 

Embryo Grading Webinar - June 16, 2021

Attendees were invited to participate with Jennifer Barfield in an interactive educational webinar on embryo grading, hosted by the IETS Foundation. The webinar covered IVP and IVD embryos.