This year in London, alongside ESHRE, Sona Academy held the fourth Summer School of Reproductology — an international educational format built around a simple but demanding idea: one topic, examined in full clinical depth.
In large medical congresses, the most important ideas are often dispersed across dozens of sessions. A specialist may hear something valuable in one lecture, something equally important in another, and then spend the rest of the day trying to connect the dots.
The Summer School of Reproductology, organized by Sona Academy, is built on a different principle. Each year, it takes one subject and examines it in full clinical depth. Not through fragments, but through a structured sequence of expert perspectives designed to lead from evidence to decision-making.
This year in London, alongside ESHRE, Sona Academy held the fourth edition of the School. The topic was LH. More than 170 specialists from 8 countries joined the event in person and online. Practising reproductive medicine specialists, embryologists, and andrologists came to a program designed not as a broad educational overview, but as a tightly focused clinical dive into one question that continues to shape protocol design, ovarian response, embryo quality, and male-factor management in reproductive medicine.
That focus became the School’s main strength.
Across six lectures and open discussion, LH was examined through physiology, pharmacogenomics, reproductive endocrinology, embryology, and andrology. Antonio La Marca addressed folliculogenesis and presented new data on Extended LH Administration, framing one of the clearest messages of the day in a single line: “Without LH, you will never have a healthy ovarian follicle.” Belen Lledó brought pharmacogenomics into the center of the conversation through data showing that two patients with similar clinical characteristics may still produce very different ovarian responses — and that LH receptor genotype-guided dosing was associated with an increase in live birth rate from 29% to 50%. As she put it, “Two patients with the same clinical characteristics, on the same protocol — may have completely different ovarian responses.” Peter Humaidan and Biljana Popovic-Todorovic connected LH to stimulation strategy, protocol design, and the real-world cost of imprecision. Marcos Meseguer moved the discussion into embryology and AI-based assessment. Sandro Esteves expanded the frame further by showing how the male factor must be re-read through endocrine stratification rather than semen analysis alone.
What emerged was a discussion that felt unusually coherent for a meeting of this scale.
LH was no longer treated as a secondary variable or an optional adjustment somewhere at the edge of stimulation strategy. It appeared instead as a true decision-making factor — one that changes protocol design, timing, dosing logic, and the interpretation of patient variability. That was one of the School’s most important achievements: it moved the conversation away from generic statements and toward a more exact clinical language. Peter Humaidan articulated that shift with unusual directness: “Since many years back, whenever a patient is 35 and above, we start LH from day one of the cycle.”
This was especially visible in the treatment of ovarian response.
The School made clear that the era of assuming the same protocol will produce the same biology is closing fast. The pharmacogenomic data presented in London sharpened that point dramatically. Patients who look similar in clinical terms may still respond very differently to the same stimulation protocol. That insight pushes reproductive medicine further away from standardized averages and closer to a model in which biological variation is not an inconvenience, but the starting point for better treatment design.
Another important shift came from the way the School handled the male factor.
In many educational settings, female and male infertility are still discussed as separate intellectual tracks. In London, they were placed in one clinical frame. POSEIDON and APHRODITE were discussed not as separate classifications belonging to separate specialists, but as part of one infertility pathway. That gave the event a more honest clinical logic. In practice, infertility is not managed as two disconnected stories. It is treated as a couple’s case, shaped by endocrine profile, ovarian response, genetics, and the quality of the first treatment decisions on both sides. Sandro Esteves captured that clinical shift precisely: “Don’t label your patient as having or not having male infertility based on the semen analysis alone. Go beyond that — add the hormonal stratification.”
The School also brought a strong note of realism into the room.
Biljana Popovic-Todorovic reminded participants of a fact that changes the weight of every protocol discussion: up to half of patients discontinue treatment after the first or second attempt. In that context, precision is no longer simply a matter of optimization. It becomes a matter of retention, confidence, and whether a patient remains in treatment long enough to benefit from any later correction. The first protocol carries more pressure than many scientific discussions are willing to admit. As she said during the School, “Up to half of our patients give up as early as the first or second trial. One more reason to get it right from the start.”
That same realism shaped the discussion around artificial intelligence.
Marcos Meseguer presented AI not as a futuristic layer added to embryology, but as a working instrument already capable of changing what clinicians can see and compare. In retrospective data, AI-based assessment detected 2.3 times more euploid blastocysts with rec FSH + LH stimulation than with hMG, establishing a direct link between stimulation protocol and oocyte quality with unusual clarity. It was one of the moments when the School showed exactly what its format is best at doing: taking an idea that is often discussed in conceptual language and grounding it in clinical evidence. Meseguer himself put it with memorable economy: “Precision is no longer an ad like it used to be. Now it’s just a question of computation.”
The value of the School, however, was not only in the content on stage. It was also in the way that content was made accessible.
Simultaneous interpretation into Ukrainian and Russian ensured that specialists could follow every nuance of the scientific discussion. Live streaming in three languages opened the event to a wider professional audience beyond the room. Recordings are published on the Sona Academy website, allowing the discussion to continue after the event itself. That matters because the School is not designed as a one-day impression. It is built as a lasting educational resource.
This is also why participants continue to return to the format year after year.
The feedback collected around the School points to the same set of strengths: concentration of knowledge, direct access to world-leading specialists, a trusted space free of direct product promotion, strong moderation, and a feeling that what is discussed there can be taken back to practice immediately. In a crowded educational landscape, that combination is not easy to achieve.
For Sona Academy, this fourth School confirmed the value of going deeper rather than wider.
Instead of trying to cover everything, the School chose to stay with one subject and examine it properly. That decision created something rare: a conversation that was clinically dense, intellectually coherent, and immediately useful. By the end of the day, participants did not leave with a long list of disconnected highlights. They left with a sharper understanding of ovarian physiology, clearer timing for LH introduction, a stronger rationale for pharmacogenomic testing where available, and a more structured approach to male-factor stratification and treatment planning.
That is what makes the Summer School of Reproductology more than an event held alongside a major congress. It is a format with its own logic, its own audience, and its own place in the professional calendar.
And this year in London, that logic worked at full strength.
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the colleagues whose work, coordination, and commitment made this year’s School possible. Their effort stood behind every part of the program — from scientific depth and operational precision to the quality of the experience delivered to participants in London and online.