Human IVF treats infertility caused when sperm and egg fail to meet within a prospective mother. A woman undergoing IVF is stimulated with hormones to produce eggs, and multiple eggs are removed from her ovaries and fertilized with sperm from a donor. Healthy fertilized eggs, or embryos, are transferred back into the woman’s uterus. When successful, a pregnancy ensues.

Edwards began research on IVF in the 1950s and later worked with gynecologist Patrick Steptoe in refining the process of egg removal, fertilization and reimplantation. Early work had shown this could be done in rabbits. In the late 1960s, Edwards was the first to try human egg removal and fertilization in vitro, a Latin term meaning “in the glass.” Ultimately, this gave rise to a now outdated term, test-tube babies.

Edwards and Steptoe researched IVF at the University of Cambridge and at hospitals in Oldham, England, where Steptoe worked. Edwards also collaborated with scientists internationally. But a decade would pass before the first IVF success, a baby born in Oldham in 1978 following a full-term pregnancy. Edwards established an IVF research center in Cambridge.

Steptoe died in 1988. The Nobel committee doesn’t award prizes posthumously. In granting Edwards the prize, the Nobel committee cited IVF as a “milestone” in medical care. IVF complications are very rare, but the procedure succeeds in only 25 to 30 percent of attempts, causing emotional and financial hardship for many couples. New findings might make predicting success better for those who have failed one attempt and are considering another.

Edwards previously won the Lasker award for his work. Edwards “was a man much ahead of his time not just in IVF, but in preimplantation genetic diagnosis, the derivation of embryonic stem cells and also for his publications and lectures on ethics in science and the role of regulation­,” says Martin Johnson, a reproductive sciences expert at the University of Cambridge.

The prize is worth about $1.5 million.

Image: Niels Geijsen, Massachusetts General Hospital/National Science Foundation

See Also:

• A Fertility First: Human Egg Cells Grow Up in Lab
• Op-Ed: Why the Internet Should Win the Nobel Peace Prize
• Nobel Prize for the Chemistry of Protein Production
• Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded: Fair or Foul?

Authors: Nathan Seppa

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