In this e-newsletter:
1. ESHRE 2010 - update
2. The EU - connection
Denmark cuts reimbursement for ART under new savings scheme
Europeans go home and multiply
EU continues its debate on 'Health Tourism'
Reproductive health back on the agenda of World Bank
First warning of 'Stem Cell Tourism' by EMEA
New Directive on organ donation
3. ESHRE campus / educational activities
4. ESHRE news
5. News in reproductive medicine
National statistics on 'Older Mothers'
A closer look at stem cells
6. ESHRE calendar
Reduced rates until 10 June
The next deadline for a reduced registration fee is 10 June 00:00 CET. After this date you will pay the full on-site registration fee. Below you can find a summary of registration fees applicable for each category. All prices are in EURO.
Details on abstracts presented in Rome are now available for all delegates on the ESHRE website.
You will need to login on the homepage first in order to access this information.
Only delegates will be able to access this information!
If you still need to book a hotel please do so here. For group bookings, you may contact “Meridiano” directly by e-mail at s.germoni@meridiano.it or eshre2010@meridiano.it. Hotel reservations will be confirmed on a “first come – first served” basis.
This year the Serono Symposia International Foundation (SSIF) will announce a new, prestigious award. If you are a physician or scientist in reproductive medicine making substantial contributions to medical education using innovative educational techniques, this award may be your opportunity. For more information on how to apply please visit the SSIF award website at www.ssifaward.org, which should go live soon.
We are looking forward to welcoming you in Rome! For more information on this year's Annual Meeting please visit the ESHRE website.
In this section you can read about news in relation to EU wide legislation or issues. Any issues that go beyond borders are itemised here.
Not every month will we have something to feature here, but we hope this section will develop over time and lead to an increased interest in ESHRE's monthly e-newsletter. For comments and feedback you are always welcome to send an email to hanna@eshre.eu.
The Danish government until now provided reimbursement for assisted reproduction treatments (ART) with up to three treatment trials for married and unmarried couples, singles and homosexuals. In its new savings plan however Denmark has allocated a pool of a mere 50 million Danish Kroner (approximately 6.7 million Euros) for groups with special needs only. Other groups will no longer receive reimbursement for ART treatments.
The cuts in this area will decrease government spending by 200 million Danish Kroner (EUR 26.9 million) annually in 2011, 2012, 2013 and thereafter. In its report the term 'groups with special needs' is not clearly defined.
'This is sad news considering Denmark has always been praised as the benchmark in Europe in terms of access and availability of treatment for patients seeking ART' said Dr. Søren Ziebe from the University Hospital in Copenhagen, Executive Committee Member of ESHRE and the SIG coordinator of all SIGs.
In 2007, 4.9% of all children born in Denmark were babies conceived with the help of ART, according to the ESHRE European IVF Monitoring Group (EIM). With 2,558 cycles per million inhabitants annually, Denmark has the highest availability of ART in Europe. 'Every school class in Denmark has two IVF children on average' said Dr. Ziebe. 'These changes will have major implications and detrimental effects for childless couples, for fertility clinics and the research environment in Denmark.'
You can find more information on this on the ESHRE website.
A report recently released by the 12 'wise men' commissioned by the European Council warned: 'The choice for the EU is clear: reform or decline.'
The report clearly outlines Europe's pressing issues. The average retirement age with 62 for men and 60 for women is much too low compared to the life expectancy of 75 and 82 respectively. Just about half of all European women work and yet the fertility is at 1.5 children per woman (well below the rate of 2.1 needed to maintain Europe's population at its current level).
More worrisome is that even if governments offered flexible work arrangements and child support, increased the retirement age and encouraged more labour mobility within Europe, all measures would not be enough to counteract the projected decline of 68 million working adults by 2050. A common EU immigration policy to attract skilled immigrants workers with investments in research and academia were hence included in the list of proposals presented by the group.
The report will not be ready until later in June, but you can already find some more information here.
During an informal meeting on 30 April, four EU health ministers agreed to propose that EU citizens of one country would have to receive authorisation by their own country before seeking treatment in another EU member state. The current legislation allows EU residents to seek treatment in any other EU country.
The proposal which is strongly supported by Spain, and over which 15 countries are now in agreement, will make the country of origin responsible for payment of health care. This new rule is opposite to the original proposal supported by UK and other, that residents can use private and public facilities in any EU country, whereby treatment is paid by the country of residence rather than origin.
This new rule would not apply to the EU worker that pays into the social security system of its country of residence. Spain is hoping that this new law will apply before the end of its EU presidency on 1st July 2010, since it relates directly to certain groups such as the high number of retired foreign residents that currently live in Spain.
More information can be found here.
The World Bank has just released its 5-year Reproductive Health Action Plan, which marks a turn in its health financing policy. Although the institute almost tripled its funding in reproductive programmes in the 35 highest fertility countries - mainly in Africa, Asia and the Middle East - from $150 million in 1995 to $432 million in 2007, it was just a drop in the ocean.
Compared to total health aid in these countries, which increased from $915 million to $4.9 billion in the same period, programmes to reduce high fertility and improve family planning made up a mere 4% of the overall health aid portfolio, dropping by two-thirds in the last decade.
Beginning of this month the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) reported that it received the 'intent of a European manufacturer to submit the first application for marketing authorisation for a stem cell-based product.' Reuters reports that officials from the EMEA met with representatives from the drug company, US and Japanese regulators and scientists from academia to discuss guidelines for approving these types of treatments.
In order to have an official approval process in place for these therapies, the EMEA is working on a reflection paper which will be finalised end of 2010. Christian Schneider, chairman of the EMEA's Committee for Advanced Therapies commented: "Stem cells hold the promise of an unlimited source of cells for therapeutic applications. However, these therapies bear certain risks such as tumourgenicity and immunorejection, and hence need to be carefully regulated."
It comes as no surprise then that the EMEA has raised concerns over patients that travel to destinations where stem cell treatments with unproven benefits are being offered. It is the first time the EMEA has raised a warning of this kind. Although the organisation has acknowledged stem cells for their potential in Advanced Therapies since 2007, it wished to emphasize that stem-cell medicinal products are yet to receive market authorisation in the EU. We have placed both EMEA documents, the 'Reflection paper on stem cell medicinal products' and the report on 'Concerns over unregulated medicinal products containing stem cells' in the ESHRE EU Archive, which is accessible for members only.
This new directive is in its nature very similar to the European Tissues and Cells Directive (EUTCD) which currently regulates the ART sector.
Amongst other, the directive's main goals are to increase the supply of organ donors, enhance the efficiency and accessibility of transplantation systems and ensure the best quality and safety of all procedures. This new directive will come into force end of this year and all EU member states have two years to transpose it into national law.
Just as with the EUTCD the member states will have to set up a national authority that will follow up on safety and quality standards and all donations have to be voluntary and unpaid, with compensation limited to expenses and loss of income related to the act of donation. The EU Health Commissioner John Dalli noted this as 'a major step forward for the over 50,000 European patients waiting for an organ transplant.' In June, the Council of Ministers is expected to adopt the directive and by July 2012 all countries must have transposed it into national legislation.
Read more on this issue here.
For all participants of the ESHRE Campus symposium on 'Approaching accreditation of a PGD centre' held in London 22-23 March 2010 the presentations and pictures can be found on the ESHRE website. Please login on our homepage first to receive access.
Other ESHRE news
20 years of PGD to be reviewed in Rome post-congress course
ESHRE’s PGD Consortium and SIG Reproductive Genetics are organising a post-congress course to celebrate 20 years of PGD. The event will take place on 1st July in Rome. This event requires separate registration than the Annual Meeting!
You will hear the latest research on PGD from different perspectives:
o The history of PGDo What is reality and what is not?o The patient’s perspective (includes talks by two families who have benefitted from PGD and ‘saviour sibling’ HLA matching)o The ethical view on PGD with the panel discussion ‘Is GATTACA almost here?’o Follow up of PGD babies
The following registration fees apply:
ESHRE members: EUR 150
Non-members: EUR 250
ESHRE Student/Paramedical members: EUR 100
Student/Paramedical non-member: EUR 150
Please register before the deadline of 21 June 2010. More information on this event can be found here.
Two 'Basic Semen Analysis' courses in the local language
Basic Semen Analysis in Greek
Athens, Greece, July 13 - 17, 2010
Contact: Dr Theodosia Zeginiadou (zeginiadou@yahoo.gr)
Basic Semen Analysis Course in Spanish
Barcelona, Spain, September 20-23, 2010
Contact: Dr. Bassas (lbassas@fundacio-puigvert.es)
For more information please visit the SIG Andrology website.
Our Journals
Human Reproduction
Editor’s choice June 2010
te Velde, E., et al., Is human fecundity declining in Western countries?
Molecular Human Reproduction
Special Issue on Klinefelter's Syndrome: basic science to clinic
New Research Horizon Reviews
Solc, P., et al., Prophase I arrest and progression to metaphase I in mouse oocytes: Comparison of resumption of meiosis and recovery from G2-arrest in somatic cells
Gardner, D.K., et al., Sex-related physiology of the preimplantation embryo
Human Reproduction Update
Son, W.-Y., et al., Laboratory and embryological aspects of hCG-primed in vitro maturation cycles for patients with polycystic ovaries
You can find more news and articles in our Press Room and in our Journals.
National Statistics shows trend towards 'Older Mothers' The data published this month by the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) led to different national newspapers and broadcast media running headlines such as 'Births to older mothers treble in 20 years', 'How old will I be when you die Mummy?' or 'Still fertile in your fabulous forties'.
According to the national institute there has been not only an overall decrease in fertility rate from 1.97 children per woman in 2008 to 1.95 in 2009, but especially in women under the age of 35. The fertility rates for women aged 35 and over however have risen with the largest increase observed in women 40 and over (+2.4%). The average age of women giving birth in the UK is now at 29.4, the highest on record. The original report by the ONS can be found here.
Every month we see a vast amount of papers being published in the field of stem cells. With so many discoveries each month and the astonishing growth we can observe in this area it is extremely difficult to identify the true research breakthroughs. A glimpse of this month's articles has been posted here.
Two papers in the journal Cell Stem Cell were of interest in May. The first paper relates to the different epigenomic landscapes of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) compared to lineage committed cells. Scientists from the University of California and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research showed that the epigenomes of these two types of cells differ drastically. Most of the changes arise from redistributions of repressive chromatin modifications. "These epigenetic mechanisms play an important critical role in deciding a cell's fate and function, and in maintaining it," explained David Hawkins from the Ludwig Institute.
The second aforementioned paper gives some insight on why human embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells, although showing so many similarities, may still be quite different. Here as well, the authors propose that the underlying differences for example in activity of specific genes (and hence mutations) may be due to a more general epigenetic phenomenon.
The Scripps Research Institute may have come a step closer to decrease the fragility of human embryonic stem cells in culture. Two novel synthetic molecules, described as Thiazovivin and Pyrintegrin, have been shown to protect the cells and hence promote their survival by more than 30 fold. When culturing stem cells, scientists need to split these cells off their colonies, a process by which many of them die. When the scientists examined growth of these cells with and without these compounds, they found the key protein e-cadherin, which acts as a mediator among cells and between cells and the extracellular matrix, to be crucial to ensure survival of these cells. Read more >
A second paper from the same Institute focused on the metabolomic profile of stem cells and compared this to more mature cells such as nerve and heart cells. They found 60 previously unidentified metabolites associated with the progression of stem cells to mature cells and an unexpected pattern in biochemistry related to the cell's level of maturity. The metabolites from stem cells showed highly unsaturated structures which decreased as they matured. These structures react easily and can change into different molecules, hence stem cells contain more 'metabolites' that appear to be more chemically flexible. Read more >
A paper appearing in the June issue of Nature Methods, explains in detail how researchers at the UT Southwestern Medical Centre created 35 new rat 'lines' using rat sperm stem cells each containing mutations for specific diseases such as Alzheimer, cancer and diabetes amongst other. After introducing genetically altered sperm into the testes of sterile rats, they were able to produce mutant offspring that will now be used for research of these diseases. Read more >
New research from Rice University and Cambridge University suggested a trio of connected proteins known as 'Scl-Gata2-Fli1 triad' to be the master regulator that may control the differentiation of hematopoietic stem cells, the cells that form new blood cells. The paper was based on a mathematical model and published in PLoS Computational Biology. Another regulating mechanism that was discovered this month by Linköping University in Sweden is related to the so called Hox genes, which are genes that are active in different parts of the body and give each region its unique identity. They showed that Hox genes exert influence not only on the genes that control stem cell division but also on the genes that control the type of nerve cells that are being created. Read more >
Finally, a study from the University of Edinburgh has shown that embryonic stem cells can switch back and forth between precursors of different cell types. These cells are basically a mix of different cell types. Previously scientists believed that embryonic stem cells can only become embryonic precursors for adult cells which is described as their pluripotent character. However, this study showed that they can alternate between cells that create the primitive endoderm and the founder embryonic cells which become adult tissue. Read more >
More news can be found in our PRESS ROOM or you can subscribe to our RSS feed for professionals in the field of reproductive science and medicine.
Preimplantation genetic diagnosis
(organised by the SIG Reproductive Genetics)
1 July 2010, Rome, Italy
EIM 10 years’ celebration meeting - more information will follow
(organised by the EIM)
11 September 2010, Munich, Germany
The determinants of a successful pregnancy
(organised by the SIG Reproductive Surgery, SIG Early Pregnancy, SIG Reproductive Endocrinology)
24-25 September 2010, Dubrovnik, Croatia
Basic training workshop for paramedics working in reproductive health - more information will follow
(organised by the Paramedical Group)
6-8 October, 2010, Valencia, Spain
Female and male surgery in human reproductive medicine
(organised by the SIG Reproductive Surgery and the SIG Andrology)
8-9 October 2010, Treviso, Italy
Forgotten knowledge about gamete physiology and its impact on embryo quality - more information will follow
(organised by the SIG Embryology)
9-10 October, Lisbon, Portugal
More information on all workshops is available in our Calendar.
Mark your calendar for our 26th Annual Meeting / Rome, Italy / 27 to 30 June 2010