Maternal Metabolic Health and Fertility: Caring About Mother’s and Daughter’s Oocyte!

"Jo Leroy is a ruminant veterinarian (2001) and did his PhD about the impact of the negative energy balance in dairy cows on reproductive physiology and on oocyte and embryo quality (Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, UGent, Belgium). He collaborated in the ambulatory large animal clinic as a PhD and Post Doc student. In fall 2006 Leroy moved to the University of Antwerp teaching Veterinary Physiology, Pathophysiology and Husbandry. In fall 2021, he was elected by the students (for the second time) as the best teacher-professor from our Faculty. Jo Leroy is the chair of the Educational Board within the Department of Veterinary Sciences. Furthermore, he routinely provides national and international guest lectures for farmers, veterinarians, human doctors and embryologists and advises international industrial partners.

Furthermore, he has built his own research line focusing on the effect of maternal metabolic health on oocyte and embryo quality and on offspring’s health. Important key words summarizing our research focus are reproduction, fertility, assisted reproductive techniques, (patho)physiology, maternal health and metabolism, cellular metabolism, oocyte and embryo quality, postnatal health, epigenetic programming, mitochondria, preconception care. The research group intensively collaborates with many expert laboratories within the UA. Leroy is co-promotor of the UA core-facility Centre of Proteomics (2022) and of the Centre of Excellence “Exposome 2.0” (2024). He is the author of more than 150 peer reviewed scientific papers, which are cited more than 4000 times and supervised 15 PhD theses. Since 1 January 2018 he is full professor (UAntwerp). Jo Leroy has been an invited speaker on more than 60 international conferences (of which 25 times in a key note lecture). He was awarded several scientific prizes (more than 12000 euro in total) and was asked to participate in more than 20 international PhD jury committees.

Jo is an active member of the IETS, BSRM and from 2018 till 2022 he was the president of the AETE (Association of Embryo Technologies in Europe) which has about 700 members involved in animal and human assisted reproduction worldwidely. In this light he organized webinar series, attended by more than 1000 people from 60 different countries.

Finally, Leroy founded and manages the “Camelid Immunisation Facility” at our University in which the team provides veterinary expert services to biotech companies using llama in their RandD programs. He is a member and president of two ethical committees on animal experiments and acted as a voluntary vaccinator during the covid pandemic."

https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/research-groups/veterinary-physiology-biochemistry/