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Tim Van Mieghem ISPD President
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Dear ISPD members and supporters,
While I had the pleasure to highlight ISPD’s vision, focused on education, collaboration and inclusivity, in the last newsletter of 2024, the spotlight of the present letter is much less optimistic. Indeed, given recent geopolitical events, the ISPD Board felt we could not ignore what is currently happening in healthcare and healthcare research around the world. Recent acute events in the United States, as well as ongoing chronic restrictions in healthcare and research funding in other countries, carry the risk of significantly compromising the outcomes of our patients. Staying silent is not an option to us anymore.
We want our members to know that ISPD stands for accessible, evidence-based healthcare for all. Government-funded research plays a critical role in making this possible, and we call on leaders to protect the (reproductive) rights of all patients.
Please read the Board’s statement linked below and engage with policy makers to protect reproductive healthcare, prenatal diagnosis, and fetal therapy worldwide.
Looking forward to a brighter message in our next issue,
Tim Van Mieghem
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Technologies in Reproductive Screening and Diagnosis Update
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Natalie Chandler, FRCPath, PhD
Francesca Romana Grati, MSCs, PhD
Co-Chairs, Technologies in Reproductive Screening and Diagnosis SIG
The Technologies in Reproductive Screening and Diagnosis Special Interest Group met at the ISPD conference in Boston. Thank you to those who attended the meeting (whether in person or virtually). The session started with a talk from Prof. Brynn Levy on the clinical implementation of short-read nanopore sequencing for rapid aneuploidy detection, which has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The next talk was from Prof. Sandi Deans who gave an update on the EQA schemes offered by GenQA that are relevant to the prenatal community. Finally, we were privileged to have a talk from Prof. Dennis Lo on his groups pioneering work on cfDNA fragmentomics. There were also many other relevant sessions for the SIG throughout the conference including two lively debates on cytogenetics being a dinosaur (about to be published online) and whether all fetuses undergoing fetal therapy should have exome sequencing. There were also two well-attended, technology-based preconference courses on fetal sequencing and the current and future directions of NIPT. We are looking forward to our next meeting in Cape Town in October.
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Registration Is Open for ISPD 2025 in Cape Town
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Register now for the 29th International Conference on Prenatal Diagnosis and Therapy, to be held online and in-person 30 October – 2 November 2025 in Cape Town, South Africa, at the Cape Town International Convention Centre.
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Preconference courses will be held on 30 October, and the conference will take place 31 October - 2 November at the Cape Town International Convention Centre in the heart of the "Mother City."
ISPD 2025 plenaries will feature invited speakers, hot topics, and debates on emerging approaches to prenatal diagnosis and therapies. Oral and poster presentations will be selected from peer-reviewed abstracts. Topics include clinical genetics, fetal imaging, fetal therapy and more!
Don't wait long to register; the advance registration deadline is 30 June 2025! View program details and secure your registration for ISPD 2025 today!
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Prenatal Diagnosis - Call for Papers
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The editors of Prenatal Diagnosis are seeking submissions for an upcoming special issue, Fetal Sequencing: What Have We Learnt and Where Are We Going. Submissions are due 30 September 2025.
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Prenatal Diagnosis Journal Issues
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Volume 45 | Issue 5 | May 2025
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Volume 45 | Issue 4 | April 2025
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Volume 45 | Issue 3 | March 2025
Editor's Choice: Chandler N, Holder-Espinasse M, Mone F. The Challenges of Performing Exome Sequencing in Structurally Normal Fetuses.
DOI: 10.1002/pd.6687
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ISPD members have complimentary online access to all Prenatal Diagnosis articles via the ISPD website.
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The ISPD Journal Club on 2 May 2025 discussed the article, "Risk of Cord Entanglement After Iatrogenic Monoamnionicity, With Selective and Solomon Laser Treatment for Twin-To-Twin Transfusion Syndrome in Monochorionic Twin Pregnancies."
Discussed by: Mariano Lanna, MD, Buzzi Children’s Hospital, Milan, Italy
The ISPD Journal Club provides a brief overview of a selected article by one or more of the authors, followed by an informal discussion of the topic. Recordings are available for ISPD members.
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