Stem Cells in Reproductive Tissues and Organs: From Fertility to Cancer (Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, 70)

​Prof. Irma Virant Klun, reproductive biologist and senior clinical embryologist, was employed for 25 years as the head of a very busy in vitro fertilization (IVF) laboratory at the Gynecology and Obstetrics Clinic of the University Medical Centre Ljubljana. With her colleagues, she introduced almost all in vitro fertilization procedures into clinical practice, including preimplantation genetic diagnosis and cryopreservation of reproductive cells and tissues in young cancer patients for preservation of their fertility before oncotherapy. In this way, many children were born to couples with the most severe forms of infertility. As a senior researcher at the Clinical Research Centre she is now involved in the project of setting up a new biobank of biological samples and a central cell laboratory at the University Medical Centre Ljubljana. She is an active researcher, interested in infertility, reproductive biology, endocrine disruptors and especially stem cells in the reproductivetissues/organs for possible cellular therapies to treat infertility and is habilitated as a full professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana. She is currently the author/co-author of 94 peer-reviewed articles in the field of reproductive medicine.