The last 50 years could be celebrated as the triumph of the molecular causes of monogenic disorders and the molecular basis of cancer.

The sequence of hundreds of thousands of genomes, the appreciation of the extensive genetic variability of individuals, the understanding of the functional genomic elements and the development of technology and computational methods, are changing medical practice and introduce novel therapeutic opportunities.

Dr. Stylianos Antonarakis, Emeritus Professor of Genetic Medicine at the University of Geneva, will talk about the opportunities as well as the many future challenges of these developments.  During his informative speech at the Athens Science Festival platform titled “Genome: The Alphabet of Life”, Professor Antonarakis will also express the hope that the genomic knowledge infrastructure will evolve leading to the improvement of medical practice.

The discussion will be moderated by Biologist and Science Journalist Dr.Vasiliki Michopoulou.

Stylianos E. Antonarakis is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Geneva. He was previously Professor and founding Chairman of Genetic Medicine at the University of Geneva Medical School, and the founding director of iGE3 (institute of Genetics and Genomics of Geneva). He is a medical, molecular, human geneticist, physician-scientist, who studied extensively the relationship between genomic and phenotypic variation.  He has published extensively (more than 750 well-cited papers and reviews) in the scientific literature, and is co-editor of the current edition of the classic textbook “Genetics in Medicine”; he is listed as one of the highly cited scientists by the ISI institute (ISI h-index 123, Google Scholar index 152). He was the President of the European Society of Human Genetics (2001-2002), the President of HUGO (2013-2017), foreign member of the Academy of Athens (2003), member of EMBO (2006), honorary member of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences (2017).  He was awarded the W. Allan 2019 Award, the internationally highest distinction in genetics, for his lifetime contributions to genomic medicine. Part of the work that led to the 2019 Nobel Prize on Medicine to Gregg Semenza was performed in his laboratory when Semenza was a postdoctoral fellow. 

Speech title: Genome: The Alphabet of Life || Date & time: Sunday 28, March, 11.00-11.50