Bourn Hall Clinic
Encyclopedia
Bourn
Bourn is a small village and civil parish in South Cambridgeshire, England. Surrounding villages include Caxton, Eltisley and Cambourne. It is 8 miles from the county town of Cambridge. The population of the parish was 1,764 people at the time of the 2001 census.Bourn has a Church of England...
, Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire is a county in England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the northeast, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, is one of the world's leading centres for the treatment of infertility
Infertility
Infertility primarily refers to the biological inability of a person to contribute to conception. Infertility may also refer to the state of a woman who is unable to carry a pregnancy to full term...
. The original building, Bourn Hall, is about 400 years old. Since becoming a medical centre the clinic has seen great expansion.
Bourn Hall Clinic was founded in 1980 by IVF pioneers Mr Patrick Steptoe
Patrick Steptoe
Patrick Christopher Steptoe FRS was a British obstetrician and gynaecologist and a pioneer of fertility treatment. Steptoe was responsible with biologist and physiologist Robert Edwards for developing in vitro fertilization...
and Professor Robert Edwards
Robert Edwards (physiologist)
Sir Robert Geoffrey Edwards, CBE, FRS is a British physiologist and pioneer in Reproductive medicine and in-vitro fertilization in particular. Along with surgeon Patrick Steptoe, Edwards successfully pioneered conception through IVF, which led to the birth of the first test-tube baby, Louise...
, who were responsible for the conception of Louise Brown
Louise Brown
Louise Joy Brown is the first person to be conceived by in vitro fertilization, or IVF.-Birth:...
, the world's first IVF or test-tube baby in 1978.
Since its foundation the clinic has assisted in the conception of over 10,000 babies.
Following the death of Patrick Steptoe
Patrick Steptoe
Patrick Christopher Steptoe FRS was a British obstetrician and gynaecologist and a pioneer of fertility treatment. Steptoe was responsible with biologist and physiologist Robert Edwards for developing in vitro fertilization...
in 1988 Peter Brinsden
Peter Brinsden
Dr. Peter Robert Brinsden MBBS, MRCS, LRCP, FRCOG is known for the treatment of infertility in couples. From 1989 to 2006 he was the Medical Director of Bourn Hall Clinic in the UK, a leading centre for the treatment of fertility problems, and where about 6,000 babies have been conceived using IVF...
was appointed Medical Director in March 1989. The current Medical Director, appointed in 2006, is Dr Thomas Mathews MD FRCOG.
Bourn Hall Clinic is one of five fertility centres selected by the NHS
National Health Service
The National Health Service is the shared name of three of the four publicly funded healthcare systems in the United Kingdom. They provide a comprehensive range of health services, the vast majority of which are free at the point of use to residents of the United Kingdom...
East of England Specialised Commissioning Group to provide treatment to patients in the region. As of 1 May 2009, childless couples in Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire will be able to access up to three cycles of IVF, plus a further three frozen embryo transfers.
A breakthrough that occurred in Bourn Hall’s early days was the application of cryobiology
Cryobiology
Cryobiology is the branch of biology that studies the effects of low temperatures on living things. The word cryobiology is derived from the Greek words "cryo" = cold, "bios" = life, and "logos" = science. In practice, cryobiology is the study of biological material or systems at temperatures below...
to IVF, allowed embryos to be frozen for transfer at a later date. The first "frozen babies" were born in 1984.
Bourn Hall also led the way in offering in vitro fertilisation surrogacy
Surrogacy
Surrogacy is an arrangement in which a woman carries and delivers a child for another couple or person. This woman may be the child's genetic mother , or she may carry the pregnancy to delivery after having an embryo, to which she has no genetic relationship whatsoever, transferred to her uterus...
. They treated the first couple in the United Kingdom in 1988 and the first IVF surrogacy child was born in 1989.
The world’s first baby born as a result of directly injecting a single sperm into the centre of an oocyte was conceived at Bourn Hall. Since this birth in 1992 "intracytoplasmic sperm injection" or ICSI
ICSI
The abbreviation ICSI may refer to:* Intracytoplasmic sperm injection, a medical technique used in assisted reproduction* International Computer Science Institute, a non-profit research lab in Berkeley, California...
has been adopted by IVF clinics around the world.
More recently, Bourn Hall pioneered the use of blastocyst
Blastocyst
The blastocyst is a structure formed in the early embryogenesis of mammals, after the formation of the morula. It is a specifically mammalian example of a blastula. It possesses an inner cell mass , or embryoblast, which subsequently forms the embryo, and an outer layer of cells, or trophoblast,...
culture, where the embryo is grown for up to five days prior to implantation. This increases the chances of IVF success.
In 2009, Bourn Hall acquired the former ISIS Fertility Centre in Colchester, Essex which has enabled more convenient access to both NHS and self funded fertility treatments for patients from the Essex and Suffolk regions.
In 2010 Bourn Hall Clinic celebrated the award of the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine administered by the Nobel Foundation, is awarded once a year for outstanding discoveries in the field of life science and medicine. It is one of five Nobel Prizes established in 1895 by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in his will...
to founder Professor Robert Edwards
Robert Edwards (physiologist)
Sir Robert Geoffrey Edwards, CBE, FRS is a British physiologist and pioneer in Reproductive medicine and in-vitro fertilization in particular. Along with surgeon Patrick Steptoe, Edwards successfully pioneered conception through IVF, which led to the birth of the first test-tube baby, Louise...
.