IVF News

Mrs Bhateri Devi, 66, from India has become the oldest woman to give birth to triplets.

The children are Mrs Devi's first, and were conceived through IVF (in vitro fertilisation) treatment at the National Fertility Centre in Haryana state, northern India. The two boys and a girl are being kept in intensive care as they are dangerously underweight.

Dr Anurag Bishnoi, who supervised Mrs Devi's treatment, said the first two IVF attempts using two eggs failed, so the doctors used three in the third cycle, resulting in the triplets. They were delivered by caesarean section.

Mrs Devi's husband of 44 years said he was ecstatic at becoming a father for the first time. 'Bhateri has fulfilled my dream of having a child and gave my family an heir', he said. In India, being unable to have children throughout married life can stigmatise women.

However the triplets come in the wake of the news that Mrs Rajo Lohan, who at 70 became the world's oldest mother, is dying from IVF-assisted pregnancy complications 18 months after the birth of her daughter at the same National Fertility Centre. Mrs Lohan suffered internal bleeding and her womb ruptured after the caesarean birth. She also needed difficult surgery to remove an ovarian cyst. Her body has not recovered from the two operations and she is now bedridden.

Dr Bishnoi also treated Mrs Lohan and denied her illness was linked to her pregnancy. 'Even though Rajo's health is deteriorating, at least she will die in peace', he said. 'She does not have to face the stigma of being barren. She had an ovarian cyst that was causing her problems but that has now been removed. The IVF treatment is completely safe. Rajo is an old woman and her life expectancy was only about five to seven years'.

Mrs Lohan and her husband are uneducated farmers. She said the dangers of the treatment were never fully explained to them: 'the doctor never warned me it was dangerous to have a baby at my age. But I was healthy before, and now I am very sick'. After nearly 54 years of marriage the couple were desperate to have a child, so took out loans to pay for the £2,000 IVF treatment.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is considering lifting its age limit for free IVF on the National Health Service (NHS), as part of a full review of its guidelines. Instead, women would be offered free IVF on the NHS if they had enough viable eggs.

This would mean women over 40 could receive free IVF on the NHS for the first time. Women between 23 and 39, who are currently eligible for three free cycles of IVF, meanwhile, could be denied it if their eggs are deemed unsuitable.

NICE is currently reviewing all its guidelines to ensure they comply with the Equality Act passed by the previous government, which aims to end age-related discrimination.

Fertility expert Dr Allan Pacey, Sheffield University, described NICE's decision to review its IVF guidelines as: 'logical to move away from age guidelines to ovarian reserve. It is unfair now'.

His views were echoed by Dr. Marco Gaudoin, medical director for the Glasgow centre for Reproductive Medicine. He said it was time NICE caught up with developments in reproductive medicine and believes the tests used to check how many viable eggs a woman has are an accurate indicator of fertility.

He continued: 'we see 40-year-olds who are not allowed treatment on the NHS and we find often that in fact they have a pretty good ovarian reserve and a good chance of successful treatment'.

But fertility doctor and vice-chairman of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists Dr Gillian Lockwood cautioned against some of the changes, saying: 'NICE seem to think that the best thing is to spend money on those with the best chance of a pregnancy; there is nothing fair about that at all'.

NICE will not finalise its new guidelines until 2012, according to The Telegraph.

Testicular tissue from pre-pubescent boys has been successfully converted to sperm precursor cells. Belgian researchers isolated and froze immature testicular tissue from two pre-pubescent boys. The preserved tissue was thawed out and used to generate spermatogonial cells - an intermediate step towards producing sperm. These findings could potentially help pre-pubescent boys left infertile as a result of cancer treatment.

Mara Curaba, a fertility researcher at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, who was involved in the study, explained that the work 'could be a promising strategy to preserve the reproductive capacity of young boys'. The findings were presented last week by Mrs Curaba at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) in Rome.

Research in mice has shown that sperm can be produced from preserved testicular tissue and that this sperm can then be used to produce viable offspring. This has yet to be achieved in humans. Mrs Curaba suggests this may be due to the freezing process used.

Previous work by Mrs Curaba and colleagues has focused on optimising this freezing process. Their findings, published in the journal Fertility and Sterility this month, describe a process called vitrification. Vitrification was shown to successfully preserve both the survival and development of mouse testicular tissue. This technique was also adopted in the human trials carried out and involves the use of chemicals to help protect the tissue. Further testing of this technique is required to ensure its effectiveness at preserving the fertility of pre-pubescent boys following cancer treatment.

In 1971, reproductive biologist Dr Robert Edwards and gynaecologist Mr Patrick Steptoe applied to the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) requesting funding for research into human in vitro fertilisation and embryo transfer. Their application was rejected. Given the subsequent success of IVF, with over three million babies born and spin-offs including PGD and stem cells, the MRC decision has been much criticised since.

Using archival material and supported by the Wellcome Trust, we have reconstructed the original negotiations and attempted to explain the decision. A paper published in Human Reproduction reports our results.

We suggest that the rejection can be understood in the context of the institutional procedures and attitudes at the time. But we also find that Dr Edwards and Mr Steptoe had surprisingly strong support.

Dr Edwards, a physiologist at the University of Cambridge, and Mr Steptoe, a gynaecologist at Oldham General Hospital, sought state funding for their increasingly promising and heavily publicised research programme, primarily to bring Mr Steptoe to Cambridge.

A preliminary application proposed an extensive programme of scientific and clinical work on human conception. The bid satisfied a strategic policy only recently developed within the MRC to encourage joint clinical and scientific research in UK academic departments of obstetrics and gynaecology, which were then considered weak. This weakness had made it difficult to recruit high-quality reproductive scientists and clinicians to the MRC's newly opened flagship enterprise, the Clinical Research Centre (CRC) at Northwick Park Hospital in west London. Its first director, Professor Graham Bull, seized the opportunity presented by Dr Edwards and Mr Steptoe to offer them both positions at the CRC, with a full set of staffed laboratories plus 20 research beds in obstetrics and gynaecology.

Dr Edwards was tempted, but declined. He told the MRC he preferred to remain in Cambridge, where he found the intellectual atmosphere more stimulating, and wished to apply for a five-year grant or even an MRC unit there. Crucially, he did not fully appreciate the strategic reasons behind the initial enthusiasm at the MRC, nor how much more difficult it would be to gain funding as an external applicant.

This course of action was to prove ill-advised for several reasons. Perhaps most importantly, there was then no academic department of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Cambridge, which was in the process of establishing a Clinical School. The local hospital consultant obstetricians and gynaecologists were reportedly hostile to the prospect of Mr Steptoe's moving there. Moreover, although thin in obstetricians and gynaecologists, Cambridge was thick with reproductive physiologists.

The emergent Clinical School decided to back another local 'young turk', Dr Roger Short, as its star. He was influential at the MRC and threatening to leave Cambridge for Edinburgh (and soon did). Dr Edwards' bid was therefore given somewhat ambivalent local support at his home institution.

Newmarket General Hospital threw a lifeline, however, again driven in part by local logistical problems. Short of consultant cover, the East Anglian Regional Hospital Board offered Mr Steptoe a part-time consultant's position, so that the rest of his time could be spent on the MRC research. The board even offered to build a 20-bed research ward - if the MRC paid.

Mr Steptoe was all set to come, although in the end he and Dr Edwards preferred a clinical research base closer to the central Cambridge laboratories. They identified a large house nearby, recently vacated, ironically, as a home for unmarried mothers. Dr Edwards' and Mr Steptoe's application to the MRC, submitted in February 1971, proposed this arrangement, with a half-time MRC position in Cambridge for Mr Steptoe, plus a part-time NHS consultant position in Newmarket.

MRC officers and referees were worried about the scale and scope, but there was also significant backing. The proposal was sent out to clinical and scientific referees. Some clinical referees were alarmed about patient safety in the proposed set-up, adrift from hospital support. There was a mixture of praise for and criticism of Mr Steptoe as an innovative if over-enthusiastic clinician. The scientific referees admired Dr Edwards as a scientist of imagination, industry and flair, but again worried about his over-enthusiasm.

They were concerned IVF embryos might be abnormal and that their replacement could lead to the birth of deformed babies. With one exception, they placed a much higher premium on limiting fertility than on alleviating infertility. There was also no enthusiasm for PGD; they preferred amniocentesis and termination. Only one referee raised the moral status of the embryo as an issue. Overall, the referees preferred primate studies first.

Several criticisms were made of Dr Edwards and Mr Steptoe for their 'inappropriate' use of the media to discuss the scientific, ethical and political issues raised by their research. The MRC could not fund the work based on such reports and the Clinical Research Board accordingly rejected the application.

Dr Edwards was shocked. He clearly still believed that the offer to join the CRC conveyed support, and - by miscommunication on one side or the other - had not understood from MRC staff how to structure the bid in a way that was likely to succeed. He articulated in a rebuttal several arguments that would have strengthened the original application. They thus came too late.

Following the rejection of their application, Dr Edwards and Mr Steptoe became embattled and isolated in their attempts to pursue their research with private funds under far-from-ideal conditions. They continued to engage with the media, in part in response to public attacks, and this fuelled further peer opposition, as well as concern at the MRC. In 1974, the then secretary articulated its policy on human in vitro fertilisation and embryo transfer at a press conference and so effectively blocked support for the next five years.

When the change in policy came, it was based on surprisingly thin evidence - two out of seven pregnancies delivered successfully to term. The MRC was now willing to fund research focused on ensuring this 'experimental therapy' was conducted safely.

Overall, the story that emerges is of research that challenged social attitudes, values and priorities. At the same time, the bid did not succeed in taking advantage of opportunities created by significant institutional innovations in the reproductive sciences and in clinical research. There was a tension between strategic planning and caution about a specific research proposal that appeared to meet many, but by no means all, strategic criteria.

More generally, the story confirms the fundamental ambivalence that continues to surround innovations in bioscience and biomedicine. It also shows the depth of ongoing conflict between faith in the benefits of scientific progress and reluctance to endorse innovations that go 'too far' - especially when they concern human reproduction.

The story of the MRC's non-funding of IVF also belies the cliché that science 'races ahead' of society. The standard view, that ethical consideration of bioscience and biomedicine can only be reactive, is contradicted by the evidence of extensive ethical debate surrounding the prehistory of clinical IVF - much of it actively stimulated by Dr Edwards himself.

Although attitudes to the media have changed significantly since the 1970s, scientists and clinicians engaged in high-profile work still face a dilemma. If they encourage public discussion of their work - which they may see as both necessary to securing support and desirable to ensure full ethical debate - must they inevitably weaken their standing among their peers?

Finally, our study questions the myth of two courageous mavericks pitted against a conservative establishment. This does capture important elements of truth: Dr Edwards and Mr Steptoe were outsiders and did pioneer—against prevailing wisdom—new ideas, therapies, values, public discourses and ethical thinking. But the process of decision-making was more complex than the myth allows. Our research provides a fuller understanding of the birth of the IVF revolution.

A sperm test that could help thousands of men who are infertile has been developed by UK and US scientists, according to The Times.

The first clinical trials of the procedure, which aims to select fertile sperm, could begin next year after a research team was awarded a £120,000 grant to develop the technology by the pharmaceutical company Merck Serono.

The test identifies unhealthy sperm by tagging them with a protein dye that binds to damaged DNA. The healthy sperm can then be selected and injected into a woman's eggs using an IVF method called intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).

This new technique has been developed by Dr Dagan Wells from the University of Oxford, UK, and Professor George Pieczenik from Rutgers University in the US. Dr Wells said: 'Sperm with fragmented DNA are hard to tell apart under the microscope, but we've developed a protein that labels fragmented DNA'.

'We think it enables us to see which sperm have genetic damage and which ones don't. The idea is to pick out the ones without the stain to use for ICSI'.

Some men are infertile because their sperm has genetic damage, which prevents them from fertilising eggs. Picking out the healthy sperm and using ICSI increases the chance of fertilisation compared to standard IVF.

The test is comparatively cheap and would add about £100 to the cost of ICSI that generally costs £3,500 to £4,500.

After screening the dye for toxicity, the next step will be to apply to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) for permission to start testing the procedure during fertility treatment. Dr Wells said: 'I would hope we could be ready for clinical trials within the next year'.

Dr Allan Pacey, a senior lecturer in andrology at Sheffield University commented: 'This is the sort of thing we've been looking for, but we need to see patient data before we can judge'.

Academy of Clinical Embryologists (ACE), the organization of clinical embryology practitioners is to offer a focused academic forum for Clinical embryologists to share ideas and knowledge, and promote closer collaborations.

ACE aims to promote high standards of practice and improvements in clinical embryology through organizing teaching, training and continuing medical education activities, developing a culture of data registries and implementing methods to improve safety and quality assurance in IVF and andrology laboratory procedures.
Our main objective is to assure the support to the professional & academic interests of embryologists working in the India.

Workshop 1 (Mechanics of Manipulator and quality control in IVF lab)
Workshop 2 (Batch IVF Practical aspect)
Workshop 3 (Vitrification Practical aspect (Hands on))
Workshop 4 (Conventional IVF, basics and troubleshooting (Hands on))

Abstract Submission Deadline: 
15th July, 2014
Early Bird Deadline:
10th July, 2014

For all details please contact 

Helpline: 07805082502

Website: http://aceindia2014.com/blog.php

New Brochure: http://aceindia2014.com/images/ACE_2014_Brochure.pdf

Mandetory Questioneer : http://aceindia2014.com/questioneer.html

[Please fill the Questioneer form after ACE 2014 Registration process. Print this form and fill all the information. Sign it and send to us at [email protected]. 10 lucky candidates will get refund back of their conference registration amount during the conference by a lucky draw.]

Fourth Announcement: 

 We invite you to join us at the "Symposium on Infertility and Reproductive Medicine"scheduled from December 16 to 18, 2010.  This world class event will be held at Rashid Auditorium in Dubai . Your last chance to register and enjoy:

Goal and course description:

This three day course is designed to meet the educational and training needs of both medical practitioners and embryologists within the fields of reproductive medicine. The program addresses the different aspects of the clinical assessment and treatment of infertility in both the male and female. A full day is dedicated to hands on training on sperm preparation techniques required for intrauterine insemination.

Educational Objectives of the Symposia

1.       Describe the prevalence and the etiology of infertility in the female and the male.

2.       Describe the different diagnostic techniques needed to establish the cause of infertility.

3.       Awareness of the recent advances in the treatment of infertility in both the female and the female.

4.       Promote the understanding of the factors that influence the outcome of infertility treatment.

5.     Understand the safety aspects and acquire the laboratory skills of different sperm preparation techniques required for intrauterine insemination.

CME Credits: This educational program is accredited by the Dubai Health Authority. Participants of the 2 day symposium (Dec 16 and 17) will receive 11.0 credits.

Educational Objectives of the Andrology Workshop

CME Credits: This workshop is accredited by the Dubai Health Authority. Those attending the 1 day long IUI workshop (Dec 18) will receive 6.0 credits

For information on registration, travel, visa, accommodation, exciting sight seeing tours, etc., please contact:

Dr. Reeta Kumar

Tel: 0097150-4571699 and 009716-5304900

Fax: 009716-5304966

E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

Speakers:

Dr Ashok Agarwal,PhD, HCLD

Dr Alex C Varghese, PhD

Dr Nabil F Aziz, FRCOG, MD

Dr Botros Rizk, MD

Dr Reeta Kumar, MS, MRCOG

For more program details of the Symposium and Workshop please do visit Lifeinvitro.com Workshop Page 

Women with poor egg (or oocyte) quality could double their chance of becoming pregnant through IVF if given melatonin, researchers have found. The work was presented at the World Congress of Fertility and Sterility in Munich last week.

'Despite great advances in assisted reproductive technology, poor oocyte quality remains a serious problem for female infertility', said Professor Hiroshi Tamura from the Yamaguchi University Graduate School of Medicine, Japan, who led the research. 'So far no practical and effective treatment for improving oocyte quality has been established'.

High levels of oxidising agents - a type of chemical compound - in the follicular fluids surrounding the egg indicate if a woman has low quality oocytes. These can 'stress' and damage the oocyte. The team took one of these agents known as8-OHdG and measured its levels in follicular fluid samples. Levels of melatonin, which is known to have anti-oxidising effects, were also measured.

The team found that, as melatonin concentration in the follicular fluids naturally increased, the level of 8-OHdG decreased, leading them to believe melatonin was linked to the reduction of the oxidising agents. They confirmed this finding in mice, and discovered that adding melatonin seemed to reduce the damage to the egg caused by the agents.

Next, the group set up a trial with women coming for IVF treatment at the Yamaguchi University Graduate School of Medicine to see if these findings could have real-world effects on IVF. Women who had failed to become pregnant because of poor oocyte quality after one cycle of IVF were split into two groups - 56 women were given three milligrams of melatonin before the next IVF cycle, and 59 just received a standard IVF cycle without melatonin.

The team found that melatonin treatment significantly increased melatonin concentrations in the women's follicles and significantly decreased concentrations of the damaging 8-OhdG. Their results showed 50 per cent of the eggs from women who taken melatonin could be successfully fertilised, as opposed to 22.8 per cent in the control group. When the eggs were transplanted into the womb, 19 per cent (11 out of the total 56) of the women became pregnant, as opposed to 10.2 per cent (six out of total 59) in the control group. The work was published in the Journal of Pineal Research.

'This work needs to be confirmed, but we believe that melatonin treatment is likely to become a significant option for improving oocyte quality in women who cannot become pregnant because of poor oocyte quality', said Professor Tamura. 'Our next step is to analyze exactly how reactive oxygen species harm the oocyte, and how melatonin reduces oxidative stress in the oocyte'.

Professor Russel Reiter from the UT Health Science Center, San Antonio, Texas, who co-authored the paper, agreed. He told BioNews: 'it is important that this work be independently confirmed on larger numbers of subjects'. But he added that the findings 'make perfect sense', as melatonin has been shown to protect many different cells and tissues from oxidative damage - the same type of damage known to occur to oocytes.

Many women face fertility problems following treatment for cancer.  However, a US research team has offered new hope to female cancer patients wishing to have children, by creating the world’s first artificial ovary capable of developing human egg cells.

Following chemotherapy and radiotherapy, the ovary is often damaged, presenting a significant barrier to conception.  Currently the only way to tackle intertility caused by ovarian failure is either through IVF (in vitro fertilisation) using a limited number of mature eggs taken from the patient, or egg donation. Or surgically removing and freezing tissue from the ovary prior to treatment, and subsequently transplanting it back.

Now researchers at Brown University, along with the Women and Infants Hospital in Rhode Island have potentially found a means to bypass these procedures by creating a functional ovary from cells donated by healthy women of reproductive age. 

To do this, they used a '3D Petri dish' made of mouldable gel, to allow theca cells – one of the two key types of ovarian support cell - to form a honeycomb structure.  They then used the other supporting cell type – granulosa cells – to encapsulate the immature egg cells, and inserted this mixture into the honeycomb. This led to all three cell types coming together in a three dimensional arrangement mimicking a real ovary, which remained viable in the culture dish for up to a week.

However, the key finding is this 3D arrangement of the three ovarian cell types was able to develop the immature egg cell to its fully mature stage, ready to be released into the womb.

The study, which was published in the Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics, not only has implications for preserving the fertility of female cancer patients, but could also provide a new model for research into the factors causing infertility in women of reproductive age.

Professor Sandra Carson, an expert in obstetrics and gynaecology at Brown University and senior researcher on the study told the Daily Telegraph: 'this really is very, very, very new and is the first success in using 3D tissue engineering principles'. 

The Daily Telegraph also quoted Professor Richard Fleming, director of the Glasgow Centre for Reproductive Medicine fertility unit, as saying: 'it is a significant step along a long pathway but really quite an important one'. 

Video announcement can be seen at http://nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=1367

Robert Edwards is awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for the development of human in vitro fertilization (IVF) therapy. His achievements have made it possible to treat infertility, a medical condition afflicting a large proportion of humanity including more than 10% of all couples worldwide.

As early as the 1950s, Edwards had the vision that IVF could be useful as a treatment for infertility. He worked systematically to realize his goal, discovered important principles for human fertilization, and succeeded in accomplishing fertilization of human egg cells in test tubes (or more precisely, cell culture dishes). His efforts were finally crowned by success on 25 July, 1978, when the world's first "test tube baby" was born. During the following years, Edwards and his co-workers refined IVF technology and shared it with colleagues around the world.

Approximately four million individuals have so far been born following IVF. Many of them are now adult and some have already become parents. A new field of medicine has emerged, with Robert Edwards leading the process all the way from the fundamental discoveries to the current, successful IVF therapy. His contributions represent a milestone in the development of modern medicine.

Infertility – a medical and psychological problem

More than 10% of all couples worldwide are infertile. For many of them, this is a great disappointment and for some causes lifelong psychological trauma. Medicine has had limited opportunities to help these individuals in the past. Today, the situation is entirely different. In vitro fertilization (IVF) is an established therapy when sperm and egg cannot meet inside the body.

Basic research bears fruit

The British scientist Robert Edwards began his fundamental research on the biology of fertilization in the 1950s. He soon realized that fertilization outside the body could represent a possible treatment of infertility. Other scientists had shown that egg cells from rabbits could be fertilized in test tubes when sperm was added, giving rise to offspring. Edwards decided to investigate if similar methods could be used to fertilize human egg cells.

It turned out that human eggs have an entirely different life cycle than those of rabbits.  In a series of experimental studies conducted together with several different co-workers, Edwards made a number of fundamental discoveries. He clarified how human eggs mature, how different hormones regulate their maturation, and at which time point the eggs are susceptible to the fertilizing sperm. He also determined the conditions under which sperm is activated and has the capacity to fertilize the egg. In 1969, his efforts met with success when, for the first time, a human egg was fertilized in a test tube.

In spite of this success, a major problem remained. The fertilized egg did not develop beyond a single cell division. Edwards suspected that eggs that had matured in the ovaries before they were removed for IVF would function better, and looked for possible ways to obtain such eggs in a safe way.

From experiment to clinical medicine

Edwards contacted the gynecologist Patrick Steptoe. He became the clinician who, together with Edwards, developed IVF from experiment to practical medicine. Steptoe was one of the pioneers in laparoscopy, a technique that was new and controversial at the time. It allows inspection of the ovaries through an optical instrument. Steptoe used the laparoscope to remove eggs from the ovaries and Edwards put the eggs in cell culture and added sperm. The fertilized egg cells now divided several times and formed early embryos, 8 cells in size (see figure).

These early studies were promising but the Medical Research Council decided not to fund a continuation of the project. However, a private donation allowed the work to continue. The research also became the topic of a lively ethical debate that was initiated by Edwards himself. Several religious leaders, ethicists, and scientists demanded that the project be stopped, while others gave it their support.

The birth of Louise Brown - an historic event

Edwards and Steptoe could continue their research thanks to the new donation. By analyzing the patients' hormone levels, they could determine the best time point for fertilization and maximize the chances for success. In 1978, Lesley and John Brown came to the clinic after nine years of failed attempts to have a child. IVF treatment was carried out, and when the fertilized egg had developed into an embryo with 8 cells, it was returned to Mrs. Brown. A healthy baby, Louise Brown, was born through Caesarian section after a full-term pregnancy, on 25 July, 1978. IVF had moved from vision to reality and a new era in medicine had begun.

IVF is refined and spreads around the world

Edwards and Steptoe established the Bourn Hall Clinic in Cambridge, the world's first centre for IVF therapy. Steptoe was its medical director until his death in 1988, and Edwards was its head of research until his retirement. Gynecologists and cell biologists from all around the world trained at Bourn Hall, where the methods of IVF were continuously refined. By 1986, 1,000 children had already been born following IVF at Bourn Hall, representing approximately half of all children born after IVF in the world at that time.

Today, IVF is an established therapy throughout the world. It has undergone several important improvements. For example, single sperm can be microinjected directly into the egg cell in the culture dish. This method has improved the treatment of male infertility by IVF. Furthermore, mature eggs suitable for IVF can be identified by ultrasound and removed with a fine syringe rather than through the laparoscope.

IVF is a safe and effective therapy. 20-30% of fertilized eggs lead to the birth of a child. Complications include premature births but are very rare, particularly when one egg only is inserted into the mother. Long-term follow-up studies have shown that IVF children are as healthy as other children.

Approximately four million individuals have been born thanks to IVF. Louise Brown and several other IVF children have given birth to children themselves; this is probably the best evidence for the safety and success of IVF therapy. Today, Robert Edwards' vision is a reality and brings joy to infertile people all over the world.

Robert G. Edwards was born in 1925 in Manchester, England. After military service in the Second World War, he studied biology at the University of Wales in Bangor and at Edinburgh University in Scotland, where he received his PhD in 1955 with a Thesis on embryonal development in mice. He became a staff scientist at the National Institute for Medical Research in London in 1958 and initiated his research on the human fertilization process. From 1963, Edwards worked in Cambridge, first at its university and later at Bourn Hall Clinic, the world's first IVF centre, which he founded together with Patrick Steptoe. Edwards was its research director for many years and he was also the editor of several leading scientific journals in the area of fertilization. Robert Edwards is currently professor emeritus at the University of Cambridge.

Edwards RG. Maturation in vitro of human ovarian oocytes. Lancet 1965; 2:926-929.

Edwards RG, Bavister BD, Steptoe PC. Early stages of fertilization in vitro of human oocytes matured in vitro. Nature 1969; 221:632-635.

Edwards RG, Steptoe PC, Purdy JM. Fertilization and cleavage in vitro of human oocytes matured in vivo. Nature 1970; 227:1307-1309.

Steptoe PC, Edwards RG. Birth after the reimplantation of a human embryo. Lancet 1978; 2:366.

Edwards RG. The bumpy road to human in vitro fertilization. Nature Med 2001; 7:1091-4.