Το γονιδίωμα στην ασθένεια και την υγεία – Στυλιανός Ε. Αντωναράκης

Περιγραφή στα Αγγλικά

The Academy of Athens turns 100 in 2026, and to mark the anniversary it has sent its academicians to a concert hall. On Tuesday 13 October 2026, the geneticist Stylianos E. Antonarakis gives «Το γονιδίωμα στην ασθένεια και την υγεία» (The Genome in Disease and Health) at the Megaron Mousikis Athinon, part of the 100 Years of the Academy of Athens lecture cycle that the Academy runs with the Megaron.

Antonarakis entered the University of Athens Medical School first in his intake in 1969 and graduated with distinction in 1975. He specialised in paediatrics at the University Paediatric Clinic at Agia Sofia under Professor Nikolaos Matsaniotis, then trained in clinical and laboratory genetics at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, in the laboratory of Haig Kazazian and Victor McKusick. His doctoral thesis, on polymorphisms of the beta-globin gene, was completed at Johns Hopkins and Athens in 1983. He went on to lead Genetic Medicine at the University of Geneva Medical School, where he is professor and chairman emeritus, and led the effort to sequence and characterise chromosome 21, the chromosome at the root of Down syndrome. He has served as president of the European Society of Human Genetics (2001-02) and of the Human Genome Organisation (2012-2017), originated World Down Syndrome Day, published more than 700 papers and reviews, and received the William Allan Award of the American Society of Human Genetics in 2019.

The lecture starts from a simple premise: every person’s genome is the foundation of their health and of their illness. Antonarakis sets out how individual variation in each person’s unique DNA largely determines the cause of, or predisposition to, genetic diseases, while mutations in the body’s somatic cells cause the many forms of cancer. Understanding that genomic architecture allows precise diagnosis, personalised treatment and prevention, and the talk examines how genomic analysis is changing medicine by turning genetic information into clinical practice. Ioanna A. Soufleri, chief editor of ΒΗΜΑScience, moderates.

The crowd for these Academy evenings behaves more like a public seminar than a concert audience: readers of science pages, medical and biology students, people who want the long version of a headline about DNA testing.

The setting is the Dimitris Mitropoulos Hall, the Megaron’s second hall, with 494 seats. The vibe is a moderated public lecture, in Greek. The format is about 90 minutes, without an interval. The door is open entry with an electronic reservation, up to two per person.

If you want a specialist seminar pitched at geneticists, this cycle is designed to carry academic knowledge to the general public. But if you want to hear how a genome goes from sequencer to diagnosis, told by someone who has spent five decades in medicine and helped map chromosome 21, this is the evening for it.

Megaro Moussikis metro station connects to the building by an underground passage, so you arrive without crossing Vasilissis Sofias. The lecture starts at 19:00. Reservations open on Tuesday 6 October 2026 through the Megaron’s webtics system, exactly one week ahead; with 494 seats and two places per person, that morning is the real deadline.

One night, one geneticist, and a centenary that fills the room with whoever reserved first.