UTC’s Bio­med­ical Ren­dez-vous took place on Jan­u­ary 24, 2025 at the UTC Daniel Thomas Inno­va­tion Cen­tre. The theme of the 7th edi­tion was high-risk preg­nan­cies and neona­tal care. This event, which has become a “must”, aims to main­tain a strong link between stu­dents in train­ing and the entire bio­med­ical com­mu­ni­ty: indus­tri­al part­ners, health estab­lish­ments and aca­d­e­m­ic research sci­en­tists and engineers.

UTC’s Bio­med­ical Ren­dez-vous gives every­one the oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss the lat­est tech­no­log­i­cal and organ­i­sa­tion­al inno­va­tions and cur­rent research projects. It also pur­sues the UTC’s orig­i­nal posi­tion­ing by ques­tion­ing the changes brought about in par­tic­u­lar by the human sci­ences: eth­i­cal ques­tions, his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive, adapt­able rights and the place of reg­u­la­tion. Last­ly, it high­lights stu­dent ini­tia­tives and the project-based teach­ing method so dear to UTC by includ­ing a poster ses­sion to present the work. ‘The qual­i­ty of the ple­nary ses­sions on a dif­fi­cult sub­ject, high-risk preg­nan­cies and pre­ma­tu­ri­ty, was strik­ing­ly high and enabled a wide audi­ence to under­stand the issues and the impact of inno­va­tions on patient care, as well as the dif­fi­cul­ty for the med­ical pro­fes­sion, not hav­ing all the answers despite the pow­er and con­stant evo­lu­tion of the tools avail­able to them. Final­ly, the round-table dis­cus­sions also high­light­ed the chang­ing place of the new-born baby in our Soci­ety, the his­tor­i­cal weight of reli­gions and the con­stant need to strike a bal­ance between human input and a tech­no-cen­tric vision of patient care’, say Isabelle Claude and Jean-Matthieu Prot, lec­tur­er-research sci­en­tists at the UTC-CNRS-BMBI lab­o­ra­to­ry, who defined this theme dur­ing a dis­cus­sion with the organ­is­ing com­mit­tee, which includes sci­en­tif­ic lead­ers and stu­dents. ‘We’re try­ing to strike the right bal­ance between the var­i­ous play­ers and the sub­jects that are top­i­cal in the sec­tor. The rich­ness of the field offers a wide choice of issues to tack­le and often sparks live­ly debate’.

An eagerly awaited event

The UTC-CNRS-BMBI lab­o­ra­to­ry is the first finan­cial sup­port­er of each edi­tion of the UTC Bio­med­ical Ren­dezvous, which enables its researchers to be high­light­ed. ‘It cov­ers such a wide range of skills and themes that each year we can eas­i­ly asso­ciate a field of research with the cho­sen theme,’ says the­mat­ic cura­tor Isabelle Claude, lec­tur­er-cum-research sci­en­tist at UTC. Among the sources of sat­is­fac­tion are the involve­ment of stu­dents in the run­ning of the day and the prac­ti­cal work­shops organ­ised with the UTC’s indus­tri­al part­ners, such as this year’s con­tri­bu­tion of sim­u­la­tion tools to staff train­ing by the com­pa­ny Laerdal, which offers an amaz­ing and “bluff­ing” degree of real­ism. Jean-Math­ieu Prot, like­wise the­mat­ic cura­tor and a lec­tur­ercum- research sci­en­tist at UTC, con­cludes: ‘The loy­al­ty of our audi­ence is anoth­er indi­ca­tion of the val­ue of such an event, because we have set up a meet­ing place and many peo­ple fol­low us from a dis­tance, we receive pro­pos­als for pre­sen­ta­tions or con­tacts from future stu­dents who are pas­sion­ate about the sub­jects cov­ered. The unde­ni­able suc­cess of this great event is now being tak­en up by oth­er flag­ship themes at the UTC, such as the RDV de l’IA!’

Innovation at the service of newborn babies

Dur­ing the round table on inno­va­tion at the ser­vice of new­born babies, which brought togeth­er Nathalie Sage-Pranchere, his­to­ri­an at the CNRS, Jean-Luc Van­hee, for­mer R&D Direc­tor of Mediprema and Cather­ine Mar­que, Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor at the BMBI lab­o­ra­to­ry, Pro­fes­sor Lau­rent Salomon, gynae­col­o­gist and obste­tri­cian at the Hôpi­tal Neck­er-enfants malades, talked about ultra­son­ics which remains the main tool for mon­i­tor­ing preg­nan­cy, and which has made con­sid­er­able progress with the con­stant improve­ment in image qual­i­ty and the emer­gence of tech­nolo­gies such as 3D/4D ultra­sound and advanced Doppler imag­ing. ‘Today, it allows ever fin­er visu­al­i­sa­tion of foetal struc­tures, facil­i­tat­ing ear­ly detec­tion of anom­alies. How­ev­er, foetal MRI is tak­ing on an impor­tant role, com­ple­ment­ing (rather than replac­ing) ultra­son­ics, offer­ing high­er con­trast res­o­lu­tion for cer­tain cere­bral, tho­racic or abdom­i­nal patholo­gies, pro­vid­ing a func­tion­al approach to organs and over­com­ing cer­tain tech­ni­cal lim­i­ta­tions of ultra­son­ic imag­ing’, explains the spe­cial­ist, for whom the emer­gence of tech­niques such as func­tion­al imag­ing opens up new prospects in the assess­ment of the pla­cen­ta and foetal cere­bral activ­i­ty. ‘This could have a major impact on our under­stand­ing and man­age­ment of growth dis­or­ders and neu­ro­log­i­cal devel­op­ment from life in utero.

KD