- Email: [email protected]
Tribute to Bob Edwards
1970s
33
He had no difficulty in convincing me to follow him when he had the extraordinary idea of founding ESHRE. We had numerous other ‘strong moments’ such as the first ALPHA meeting in Sorrento. Another was the 3rd Alpha meeting in New York (September 2001). We drove from New York to Canada (Montreal) with Colin Howles and Brian Dale. All three of them were able to take a flight to London, but I was stuck for 6 more days in Montreal. The last very good moment we had with Bob was at the party I had at my home during ESHRE in Lyon (2007). Bob was in good shape. A great friend . . .
attractive than my clinical studies. Everything Bob told us about in the early 1980s has become reality even up to 2011. His vision guided me all through my clinical and scientific work, his friendship meant a great deal to all of us and I am indeed honoured and happy to join the worldwide congratulations for the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The picture of Bob and me was published in the Journal f¨ ur Reproduktionsmedizin und Endokrinologie on the occasion of the Annual Meeting of the German Society of Reproductive Medicine (DGRM) celebrating the 50th anniversary of the society in 2008.
Tribute to Bob Edwards
Tribute to Robert Edwards
Prof. Dr Liselotte Mettler Kiel, Germany
Marilyn Monk Professor Emeritus, Institute of Child Health, University College, London
As young obstetrician and gynaecologist it was my great pleasure to personally meet Bob first at the World Congress of IFFS in Tokyo and Kyoto, Japan, in 1971. I was fascinated by his talk on IVF. In discussion with him in subsequent years at various medical meetings this challenging topic of human in-vitro fertilization and embryo transfer (IVF ET) became the centre of my scientific life. Twice I had the honour of a short research stay in his Physiological Laboratory in Cambridge. I gave my academic habilitation/professorship paper in the year 1976 at the University of Kiel on the topic of IVF ET. I had established in the year 1972 1973 an experimental IVF model in mice to be used to study the effect of sperm and oocyte antigens for contraception. We were in constant scientific discussion with Bob, Jean Purdy and Patrick Steptoe via the first centres in Germany to successfully produce an IVF baby. In 1982 Bob visited our clinic in Kiel he loved to drive with me in my Porsche from the airport in Hamburg to Kiel and gave me for our IVF work wonderful advice: ‘Lilo, you have to break the wall between the laboratory and the operation theatre’, which we did and then went on to have our first IVF baby. We organised the first World Congress of IVF in Kiel in 1981. Also in 1981 I was with the 1st Bourn Hall Meeting, at that time nine-months pregnant, and enjoyed a lovely scientific meeting in Bourn Hall, Great Britain with much camaraderie. As a clinician and laparoscopic surgeon with Kurt Semm I always found the field of human reproduction more
Fig. 1. Liselotte Mettler and Bob Edwards together on a visit to Kiel University in 1993.
I first met Bob in 1975 when I joined Anne McLaren’s new MRC Mammalian Development Unit in the Galton Laboratory at University College London. I was previously a molecular biologist working on mechanisms of DNA replication, repair and recombination, in bacteria and their viruses and I knew very little about the general field of development. Soon however, with the chatter in the lab and a few developmental biology meetings, I became aware of one of the heroes in the field Dr Robert Edwards and of the Edwards and Steptoe groundbreaking work leading to the birth of the first baby originating from the fertilization of an oocyte outside the body in-vitro fertilization, or IVF. Bob was always a noticeable presence at meetings a fatherly figure in the field and hugely supportive of the work and the medics and scientists involved. Bob’s interests were not only confined to the major medical breakthrough of IVF and I became well aware of his enthusiastic and learned contributions in all aspects of mammalian embryonic development. Among Bob’s many major contributions to the field was the first demonstration of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD, the diagnosis of a genetic characteristic in a few cells taken from an embryo before initiating a pregnancy with that embryo. In 1967, Bob and Richard Gardner described biopsy of a few cells from a rabbit embryo, screening the biopsied cells for a sex chromatin body (only in females cells), and replacement of the operated rabbit embryos in the mother. They showed that the biopsy analysis had accurately diagnosed the sex of the fetuses. In the mid 1980s, with the widespread use of IVF to treat infertility, scientists were beginning to wonder whether it would be possible to diagnose genetic disease in a biopsied cell of the human embryo and then implant only the embryos free from the disease gene back in the mother. This approach could be offered to prospective parents who knew they were at risk of having a child with a severe genetic disease. Bob was very much involved in these discussions. I remember one such discussion held at the Ciba foundation in 1986. Bob was there, as were Anne McLaren, myself and others involved in embryology and obstetrics. It was clear that the rate-limiting factor for such an approach at the time was not the biopsy techniques, nor the transfer of embryos back to the mother, but the sensitive single cell diagnostic techniques to detect a single copy disease gene.
33
He had no difficulty in convincing me to follow him when he had the extraordinary idea of founding ESHRE. We had numerous other ‘strong moments’ such as the first ALPHA meeting in Sorrento. Another was the 3rd Alpha meeting in New York (September 2001). We drove from New York to Canada (Montreal) with Colin Howles and Brian Dale. All three of them were able to take a flight to London, but I was stuck for 6 more days in Montreal. The last very good moment we had with Bob was at the party I had at my home during ESHRE in Lyon (2007). Bob was in good shape. A great friend . . .
attractive than my clinical studies. Everything Bob told us about in the early 1980s has become reality even up to 2011. His vision guided me all through my clinical and scientific work, his friendship meant a great deal to all of us and I am indeed honoured and happy to join the worldwide congratulations for the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The picture of Bob and me was published in the Journal f¨ ur Reproduktionsmedizin und Endokrinologie on the occasion of the Annual Meeting of the German Society of Reproductive Medicine (DGRM) celebrating the 50th anniversary of the society in 2008.
Tribute to Bob Edwards
Tribute to Robert Edwards
Prof. Dr Liselotte Mettler Kiel, Germany
Marilyn Monk Professor Emeritus, Institute of Child Health, University College, London
As young obstetrician and gynaecologist it was my great pleasure to personally meet Bob first at the World Congress of IFFS in Tokyo and Kyoto, Japan, in 1971. I was fascinated by his talk on IVF. In discussion with him in subsequent years at various medical meetings this challenging topic of human in-vitro fertilization and embryo transfer (IVF ET) became the centre of my scientific life. Twice I had the honour of a short research stay in his Physiological Laboratory in Cambridge. I gave my academic habilitation/professorship paper in the year 1976 at the University of Kiel on the topic of IVF ET. I had established in the year 1972 1973 an experimental IVF model in mice to be used to study the effect of sperm and oocyte antigens for contraception. We were in constant scientific discussion with Bob, Jean Purdy and Patrick Steptoe via the first centres in Germany to successfully produce an IVF baby. In 1982 Bob visited our clinic in Kiel he loved to drive with me in my Porsche from the airport in Hamburg to Kiel and gave me for our IVF work wonderful advice: ‘Lilo, you have to break the wall between the laboratory and the operation theatre’, which we did and then went on to have our first IVF baby. We organised the first World Congress of IVF in Kiel in 1981. Also in 1981 I was with the 1st Bourn Hall Meeting, at that time nine-months pregnant, and enjoyed a lovely scientific meeting in Bourn Hall, Great Britain with much camaraderie. As a clinician and laparoscopic surgeon with Kurt Semm I always found the field of human reproduction more
Fig. 1. Liselotte Mettler and Bob Edwards together on a visit to Kiel University in 1993.
I first met Bob in 1975 when I joined Anne McLaren’s new MRC Mammalian Development Unit in the Galton Laboratory at University College London. I was previously a molecular biologist working on mechanisms of DNA replication, repair and recombination, in bacteria and their viruses and I knew very little about the general field of development. Soon however, with the chatter in the lab and a few developmental biology meetings, I became aware of one of the heroes in the field Dr Robert Edwards and of the Edwards and Steptoe groundbreaking work leading to the birth of the first baby originating from the fertilization of an oocyte outside the body in-vitro fertilization, or IVF. Bob was always a noticeable presence at meetings a fatherly figure in the field and hugely supportive of the work and the medics and scientists involved. Bob’s interests were not only confined to the major medical breakthrough of IVF and I became well aware of his enthusiastic and learned contributions in all aspects of mammalian embryonic development. Among Bob’s many major contributions to the field was the first demonstration of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD, the diagnosis of a genetic characteristic in a few cells taken from an embryo before initiating a pregnancy with that embryo. In 1967, Bob and Richard Gardner described biopsy of a few cells from a rabbit embryo, screening the biopsied cells for a sex chromatin body (only in females cells), and replacement of the operated rabbit embryos in the mother. They showed that the biopsy analysis had accurately diagnosed the sex of the fetuses. In the mid 1980s, with the widespread use of IVF to treat infertility, scientists were beginning to wonder whether it would be possible to diagnose genetic disease in a biopsied cell of the human embryo and then implant only the embryos free from the disease gene back in the mother. This approach could be offered to prospective parents who knew they were at risk of having a child with a severe genetic disease. Bob was very much involved in these discussions. I remember one such discussion held at the Ciba foundation in 1986. Bob was there, as were Anne McLaren, myself and others involved in embryology and obstetrics. It was clear that the rate-limiting factor for such an approach at the time was not the biopsy techniques, nor the transfer of embryos back to the mother, but the sensitive single cell diagnostic techniques to detect a single copy disease gene.