Our aims and activities

We aim to create a community of geneticists, bioinformaticians and clinicians with expertise and interest in studying male infertility. Together, we endeavour to generate well-characterised patient cohorts for genomic studies, improve the statistical and bioinformatic analysis of genomic data, accelerate replication of novel genomic findings and conduct genotype-phenotype studies as well as functional validation.

In addition, we are involved in basic studies of human and mouse spermatogenesis, development and validation of novel diagnostic assays, and in the long-term follow-up of children born through the use of assisted reproductive technologies.

Within the consortium we have formed 3 key working groups, each focused on specific aspects of male infertility research and diagnostics. In the different working groups, we will coordinate and harmonize, clinical phenotyping and patient inclusion, genetic studies and bioinformatics as well as functional studies.

Genomics
Lead: Don Conrad and Joris Veltman
Participants: Frank Tüttelmann, Ki Aston and Alexander Yatsenko

 Clinics
Lead: Frank Tüttelmann, Ki Aston and Csilla Krausz
Participants: Rob McLachlan, Ewa Rajpert-De Meyts, Godfried van der Heijden and Stéphane Viville

 Functional validation
Lead: Moira O’ Bryan
Participants: Don Conrad, Kristian Almstrup and Lee Smith

Please contact us if you want to join any of these working groups and contribute to our mission, to identify and characterize the genetic causes of male infertility, allowing for improved diagnostics, development of novel treatments and enhanced patient care.