Prof. Ann Van Soom: – I have the best job in the world

What do we know about the reproduction and fertility of mammals, and what's still a mystery to us?

We know the basics of reproduction in mammals, especially in domestic animals and in the laboratory mouse, both of which have been studied a lot. We know that wild animals have a seasonal reproduction: they will only be fertile for a limited time during the year, allowing them to mate and give birth in the spring, a season which is the most advantageous one to raise their young (and not in the winter time for instance, when there is no food and it is cold). This principle of seasonal reproduction has been lost in many domestic species, since they are protected by adequate housing conditions provided by humans during the winter and they are fed a nutritious diet during the whole year, hence seasonal reproduction has become less important. 

This specific characteristic is therefore more or less lost in domestic species like cattle and pigs. The dog, which is a descendant of the wolf, can also be fertile regardless of the season, but has less estrous cycles than the other domestic animals. All other animals are polyestrous, meaning they have several cycles following each other, while the dog is mono-oestrous. The canine estrus period is followed by a period of sexual inactivity, called anoestrus (which may be a remnant of its wild ancestor, the wolf who only mates once a year). We have come to understand the basic concepts of oogenesis and the estrous cycle, which can be quite different among domestic animal species, and of spermatogenesis, which is quite similar but differs in length between species. 

However, some aspects of reproduction are still an enigma, such as the signal for recognition of pregnancy in the horse. What signal is the equine embryo releasing to let its mother know it is pregnant? In humans we know it is hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) which is used in our pregnancy test, in the horse, we still don’t know. 

We have been breeding our livestock to be fertile. Infertile animals are not used, it is not economical to treat them for infertility. In wildlife, the same thing  happens: infertile animals cannot produce offspring, and will not reproduce their genetics (survival of the fittest). Only in men, infertility has become an important problem: 1 out of six couples is infertile and seek advice for treatment. They want their own genetic child, because in our western culture, an individual is important. The same is happening in our pet animals: we want to have offspring of that particular dog, cat or horse. That is why people are looking for infertility treatment by assisted reproduction for their pets, or even cloning, to get their beloved animal back. 

Is there still a lot to be discovered in biological sciences? 

Here I will refer to a statement made by a Belgian scientist and Nobel Prize winner, Francois Englert: „Everything is left to be discovered, except that which is already known”.  And another saying: “You can observe a lot just by looking”.

You chose veterinary medicine and you considered biology, so my question is – why not human medicine?

This is simple: as a child and teenager, I loved animals, especially dogs and horses. I was also interested in people, but I was afraid if I would study all these diseases, I would get depressed having to work within the setting of a doctor’s practice or in a clinic. I loved to be outside  more,  in nature, with animals, and on the farm. In the end, I didn’t become a practising veterinarian, and focused more on research, but I still love the veterinary profession. And I still like to walk in nature with my two dogs.

Your research, although it deals with cattle, horses, felines, is also closely related to human biology – how can the knowledge acquired in the former area be used in the latter?

Many mechanisms are evolutionary conserved, so we can learn from processes in animals and examine if this is also the case in humans, using much less embryos. In animals, we have more possibilities to work with embryos than in humans. There are no ethical restrictions when embryos are less than two weeks old, and are produced from slaughterhouse material. Hence we can optimise techniques that are beneficial to humans on animal embryos first, without having to deal with large numbers of human embryos.  

You have promoted a hundred MSc students, many PhDs, supervised post-doctoral fellowships and you conduct your own research – how do you manage to combine all these activities?

At this point in my career, I have sufficient postdocs and colleagues to help me with supervising the students. And in the end, the master thesis, the PhD thesis, and papers, are all their own responsibilities (of the students). I can just guide them and help them, pointing them in the right direction and finding a plan B if something doesn’t work out as expected, but I will not write it for them. And if they are not suited for a PhD, they need to go. This happened fortunately only once or twice in my entire career.

What determines academic success and what determines success in educating?

This is a difficult question: “Publish or perish” is a harsh truth in academia. But now, with the advent of a whole new group of journals, it becomes more difficult to decide which journals to publish in. I also think networking is very important in academia: it is a bit like in politics. It isn’t sufficient to stay in your lab and just work hard, you also have to interact with people. 

If you mean by success in educating PhD students, I think it is important to see what the strengths and weaknesses of a particular PhD student are, and try to let them do what they are good at. Some are better in the lab, and need a lot of help with writing, others are very good at writing but they write in a very complex way, so you have to guide them again to make sure that the story will be understandable. Some are excellent in making presentations and explaining their research. I think all students have remarkable gifts and your job as a supervisor is to see those gifts and talents and focus on them, and not focus too much on their shortcomings.

A very small number of students come to me with special requests, like to work with wildlife. If they are very motivated they can do it, but this requires an important input from the student, since there is no funding for research in wildlife.

Do you remember the feeling when your first foal was born after vitrification, thawing and ICSI of an immature oocyte? At that moment, did you feel like a creator or rather an intermediary?

Well this is research that I made possible; I didn't do it myself, so I’m really the intermediary. I’m not the type of person that spends the whole day in a lab anymore. Those days are long gone. But I’m happy if I see the pride in the eyes of a student who reports on a success. We also take team pictures to celebrate such an achievement, and inform the press.

You work with scientists from the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences. How did this collaboration come about?
I met prof. Nizanski and the team of the UPWr Department of Reproduction during the EVSSAR meetings on small animal reproduction. They were already collaborating with one of my former PhD students, Tom Rijsselaere, who has specialised in small animals. Later, Tom left our department and I took over his duties and his connections in the small animal world and I also tried to get more research going on in that area. Because prof. Nizanski and the team of the UPWr Department of Reproduction were also interested in assisted reproduction and wildlife, we started to visit each other's departments to learn from each other and just before COVID, we got a collaboration project together sponsored by NAWA in Poland. Unfortunately we couldn’t travel for two years due to the pandemic but kept in touch by teleconferencing. During the last year, we were finally able to do frequent visits to each other, which was very nice. 

Your friends from Wrocław call you a modern-day Marie Skłodowska-Curie. Is that a challenge? A commitment?

This is too much honour. Marie Curie did groundbreaking research and was in many ways a pioneer. Moreover she was a double Nobel prize winner. The only resemblance that there may be is that she was also married to a scientist, just like me. I see myself more as a facilitator of my research lines, not as an inventor.  

Skłodowska-Curie was met with the reluctance of male scientists. Is gender still an issue in the scientific world today, or not anymore?

I have met very kind and nice male scientists during my career and during networking. Most of them are very hard working, intelligent and open minded. Only a few were not like that, and I refrained from interacting with them as much as I can, but there are also female scientists who are less agreeable. 

Gender can still be an issue in academia, because women find it sometimes difficult to combine an academic career and a family. Women are sometimes also less aware of the fact that networking is a very important aspect of your scientific career, and they focus too much on the work itself, and not on the scientific contacts. 

But I think that things are evolving in the right direction.... 

What interests you most about science?

Reproduction, the start of life, is one of the most fascinating processes to study. And I do like the comparative aspect: it is really fascinating to see the different strategies that animals have found to reproduce.  I am most interested in mammals but also other animals like lizards, fish and birds can be interesting. Just imagine that some snake species can store fertile sperm in parts of their genital tracts (receptacles) for seven years! And that the shortest pregnancy in mammals is less than two weeks (12 days – opossum) and the longest a little bit less than two years (22 months – African elephant). Also the fact that it took so long to find a repeatable method to perform in vitro fertilisation in the horse is amazing: the sperm is very resistant to capacitation  in vitro and only a year ago, it was found that a very long incubation period of 22h is necessary to capacitate the sperm. All these findings are so interesting, and it makes you wonder how this has evolved in nature over time. I do find Charles Darwin one of the most interesting scientists of all time.  

Would you choose your career path and research area again?

Yes definitely! I have the most interesting job in the world! 

Inteviewed by Katarzyna Kaczorowska

Prof. Ann Van Soom

World-renowned authority in veterinary science and specialist in the field of animal reproduction. She has been affiliated with Ghent University since the beginning of her career (she graduated from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, obtained her PhD in 1996, specialised in animal reproduction three years later and became a professor in 2008). Since 2011, she has headed the Department of Reproduction, Obstetrics and Herd Health. Prof Ann Van Soom's research interests focus on in vitro fertilisation, sperm properties, embryo-pathogen interactions, new technologies in insemination and sperm dilution, stem cell research, embryo differentiation and animal model studies in relation to human reproduction. The researcher seeks answers to two questions: how embryos differentiate from a single-celled zygote to a multicellular blastocyst, and how the sperm enters the egg. She mainly studies in vitro embryo differentiation in relation to in vivo embryos as the gold standard, taking into account maternal interaction. Her scientific involvement in the search for embryo quality criteria and the development of embryo quality criteria, using embryo morphology and embryonic developmental stage sequences together with immunofluorescence techniques, deserves to be highlighted. Professor Ann Van Soom is a world leader in the field of animal reproduction, a personality and authority involved in many forward-looking and innovative projects, and her achievement The Belgian professor's achievements include more than 400 WoS-listed publications, published in world-renowned Journal Citation Reports, and her high scientific reputation is also evidenced by the fact that numerous papers have been in scientific circulation for many years with a citation count of almost 10,000 and a Hirsch index of 51. In addition, the scientist is the author of four chapters in scientific books and the editor of three more. She has held and continues to hold important academic and professional positions and is a member of numerous scientific societies.

The beginning of the collaboration between the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in Wrocław and Prof. Van Soom dates back to 2007 and joint work with Prof. Wojciech Niżański in EVSSAR (The European Veterinary Society for Small Animal Reproduction). Recently they have focused, on the joint implementation of the ScienceNet project, coordinated by UPWr and led by Prof. Niżański, among other things. This is an international, multicentric platform of partners active in a single field of research that is fundamental to achieving dynamic scientific progress. The pillars of UPWr's collaboration with Professor Ann Van Soom are not only the scientific exchange of doctoral students and academics and the joint research we carry out, but also the organisation of scientific workshops. The Belgian scientist was also involved in establishing and maintaining a collaboration between UPWr and the University of Ghent in the Erasmus+ project. It was through her initiative and efforts that a student exchange between the universities was introduced.