SDS POPS
Global Patient Advocacy and Partnering Summit
The only global, virtual meeting of its kind to provide patients, caregivers, scientists, physicians, and all other stakeholders with an opportunity to connect and discuss all things related to Shwachman-Diamond Syndrome research and advocacy.​
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Save the date! SDS POPS 2025 is scheduled for October 12, 2025. This year's focus is Gene Therapy for SDS.
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Registration link will be posted here over the coming weeks. Stay tuned!
Catch up on last years' recordings at your convenience, and come prepared in October 2025 to engage in learning and discussions. ​​The recordings of the 2023 and 2024 editions are now posted.
Realtime Translations Available!
We serve the global SDS community - and making our content available in as many languages as possible is a high priority. We are excited to share that real-time translation of the captions will be available on Zoom for the meeting. Instructions will be shared during the meeting.
Supported languages currently include:
Arabic, Cantonese, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French (France), French (Canada), German, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese
Partners and Sponsors
Our programs, including educational programs such as SDS POPS, are made possible through support from our donors, partners, and sponsors. Thank you for making this work possible!
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If you or your company would like to support our work through Sponsorships or Donations, please reach out to our development team at gifts@sdsalliance.org.
Agenda [coming soon]
Tentative, subject to change.
All times in ET (New York Time)
Speakers [coming soon]
In alphabetical order
Dr. Eszter Hars
Dr. Eszter Hars, Mother of an SDS patient, and Founder/President/CEO/Science Director of the Shwachman-Diamond Syndrome Alliance. Dr. Hars holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, where she studied cancer and leukemia. She has over 20 years of experience in scientific research and the biotech industry. As VP of Regulatory Affairs at CytoVera Inc., a lab equipment developer for hematopoeitic stem cell banking, Dr. Hars was in charge of regulatory approval of medical devices by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Hars has also managed business development as well as customer relationships at Quosa Inc., an information technology company, which was acquired in 2012 by Elsevier, the largest scientific publisher in the world. Currently, Dr. Hars is President of a biotech startup that specializes in developing new tools for various new therapies, including CAR-T cell cancer therapy and beta cell replacement therapy for diabetes. Dr. Hars has been engaged in SDS community building and volunteering wherever possible, since her daughter was diagnosed with Shwachman-Diamond Syndrome (SDS) in 2015. In 2020, Dr. Hars founded the SDS Alliance, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Through the SDS Alliance, Dr. Hars is dedicated to accelerating the development of new therapies for SDS.