Part I - CryoStore Summer School

Day 1 - 4 (2-5 July, 2025)

Training school on germinal cells and assisted reproductive technologies in farm animals

Catherine Labbé opened and welcomed all participants to the second CryoStore summer school at INRAE in Rennes, France on Wednesday 2nd July. Jean-Jacques Lareyre (INRAE) continued with an introduction to the biology of the germinal cells in mammals and fish.

Martin Pšenička from the University of South Bohemia gave a talk about biotechnologies using germinal stem cells for surrogate gamete production in fish species: from the first proofs of concept to practical application.

Following this, Nathalie Beaujean presented her 7 years of research on key factors to improve pluripotency and chimeric gamete production in rabbit, the result of which has recently led to a publication in Nature Communications.

Slide from the presentation of N. Beaujean

After lunch, the PhD student were divided into groups to start the practical training on testis collection and dissociation, germinal stem cell grafting and microinjection, CASA sperm motility analysis and flow cytometry.

To have enough time for real hands-on training, the groups continued with the practicals on Thursday 3rd July.

In the morning of July 3rd, Marie Saint-Dizier presented gametes biology and maternal specificities during in vivo fertilization in mammals, in addition to the application to in vitro fertilization.

Afterwards, Pierre Comizzoli from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (USA) explained the role of extracellular vesicles in reproductive physiology.

In the morning of Friday July 4th, Lucie Gavin-Plagne gave an overview of the transfer of cryopreservation research to the industry, a topic that is not easily to covered in just one hour. Lucie has a PhD in cryopreservation but works now as a Global Field Application Director in IMV Technologies.

After Lucie’s lecture, Ian Mayer continued with an overview of Animal welfare, including ethics, pain perception legislation and the three Rs.

In the afternoon, Hasan Abbas from GRID-Arendal started the workshop on creative outreach for the general audience. This workshop included key principles of engaging communication (below), fundamentals of sequential storytelling and information about how we use and test AI in our workflows.

i. Clear and understandable key message

ii. Know your audience

iii. Identify a compelling angle, story or a hook

iv. Less is more

v. Lead the audience to seek more information/material

The students worked on different ways of communicating their research project using drawings, comics and stop-motion animation.

Thank you to all participants and everyone involved!

Catherine Labbé and CryoStore DC Mafalda has done a great job with creating a wonderful, interesting and insightful event for the PhD students.

From left: Firouzeh Sadeghzadeh, Mahsa Abdi, Oleksandra Hubenia, Charlène Labesse and Sheyda Shapouri during the practical on testis collection and dissociation on rainbow trout.