Prenatal Genetic Testing

President /co-chair/secretary

Nathalie Brison / Katrien Janssens / NA
Email: nathalie.brison@uzleuven.be /  katrien.janssens@uantwerpen.be 

Short Mission statement/goals

To harmonize prenatal genetic diagnosis in the 8 recognized Belgian Genetic Centers.
Examples include:

• Harmonisation of standard operating procedures for invasive and non-invasive prenatal testing as well as NGS;
• Development, approval and revision of guidelines on prenatal diagnosis, including invasive and non-invasive prenatal testing, NGS and variant interpretation;
• NIPT national registry: follow-up on performance, quality control, reported incidental findings;
• Discussion of special cases, observations, meetings, new developments in the field;
• Research initiatives; 
• Teaching and training initiatives; 
• Accreditation 
• Reaching out to external clinical labs to discuss NIPS topics (reporting policy of sex chromosomal abnormalities, quality control)

Guidelines:

• Guidelines for NIPT good clinical practice
• Guidelines managing incidental findings detected by NIPT
• Guidelines Prenatal Array
• Guidelines Prenatal NGS
• Guidelines Prenatal rasopathy panel Testing
• Reporting policy fetal CNV detected by aCGH upon invasive test
• Reporting policy maternal incidental findings by NIPT
• Table of susceptibility loci in context of invasive prenatal testing

Meetings:

• 4 times/year (1 live/hybrid, other meetings via teams)
  Clinical and laboratory geneticists of all recognized Belgian genetic centers represented
  
  

Steering Members: 

UA / UZA (Antwerp):

• Steering member: Katrien Janssens katrien.janssens@uantwerpen.be

UG / UZ (Ghent):

• Steering member:  Machteld Baetens Machteld.Baetens@uzgent.be

UCLouvain / Saint-Luc (Brussels):

• Steering member: Armelle Duquenne Armelle.Duquenne@saintluc.uclouvain.be

IPG (Gosselies):

• Steering member: Sonia Rombout sonia.rombout@ipg.be

CHU Liège (Liège):

• Steering member: Jean-Stéphane Gatot jsgatot@chuliege.be

ULB / Erasme (Brussels):

• Steering member: Bruno Pichon bruno.pichon@hubruxelles.be

VUB (Brussels):

• Steering member: Eva Sammels eva.sammels@uzbrussel.be

UZ Leuven / KULeuven:

• Steering member: Nathalie Brison nathalie.brison@uzleuven.be