Bourn Hall Clinic in

Bourn Bourn is a small village and civil parish in South Cambridgeshire, England. Surrounding villages include Caxton, Eltisley and Cambourne. It is 8 miles (12 km) from the county town of Cambridge. The population of the parish was 1,015 peop ...

Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a county in the East of England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to t ...

, England, is a centre for the treatment of

infertility Infertility is the inability of a person, animal or plant to reproduce by natural means. It is usually not the natural state of a healthy adult, except notably among certain eusocial species (mostly haplodiploid insects). It is the normal st ...

. The original building, Bourn Hall, is about 400 years old. Since becoming a medical centre, it has been greatly extended.

History

Bourn Hall Clinic was founded in 1980 by

IVF In vitro fertilisation (IVF) is a process of fertilisation where an egg is combined with sperm in vitro ("in glass"). The process involves monitoring and stimulating an individual's ovulatory process, removing an ovum or ova (egg or eggs) f ...

pioneers Mr

Patrick Steptoe Patrick Christopher Steptoe CBE FRS (9 June 1913 – 21 March 1988) was an English obstetrician and gynaecologist and a pioneer of fertility treatment. Steptoe was responsible with biologist and physiologist Robert Edwards and the nurse Je ...

, embryologist

Jean Purdy Jean Marian Purdy (25 April 1945 – 16 March 1985) was a British nurse and embryologist and a pioneer of fertility treatment. Purdy was responsible with Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe for developing in vitro fertilisation. Louise Joy ...

and Professor Robert Edwards, who were responsible for the conception of

Louise Brown Louise Joy Brown (born 25 July 1978) is an English woman who was the first human to have been born after conception by ''in vitro'' fertilisation experiment (IVF). Her birth, following a procedure pioneered in Britain, has been lauded among "t ...

, the world's first

test-tube baby In vitro fertilisation (IVF) is a process of fertilisation where an egg is combined with sperm in vitro ("in glass"). The process involves monitoring and stimulating an individual's ovulatory process, removing an ovum or ova (egg or eggs) fr ...

in 1977. Since its foundation the clinic has assisted in the conception of over 10,000 babies. Following the death of Patrick Steptoe in 1988, Peter Brinsden was appointed Medical Director in March 1989. Bourn Hall Clinic is one of five fertility centres selected by the

NHS The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the " ...

East of England Specialised Commissioning Group to provide treatment to patients in the region. As of 1 May 2009, childless couples in Cambridgeshire,

Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the Nor ...

Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include ...

Essex Essex () is a Ceremonial counties of England, county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the Riv ...

Bedfordshire Bedfordshire (; abbreviated Beds) is a ceremonial county in the East of England. The county has been administered by three unitary authorities, Borough of Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Borough of Luton, since Bedfordshire County Council ...

and

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For gov ...

will be able to access up to three cycles of

, plus a further three frozen embryo transfers. A breakthrough that occurred in Bourn Hall’s early days was the application of

cryobiology Cryobiology is the branch of biology that studies the effects of low temperatures on living things within Earth's cryosphere or in science. The word cryobiology is derived from the Greek words κρῧος ryos "cold", βίος ios "life", and λ� ...

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 is an arrangement, often supported by a legal agreement, whereby a woman agrees to delivery/labour for another person or people, who will become the child's parent(s) after birth. People may seek a surrogacy arrangement when pregna ...

. 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 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 * Institute of Company Secretaries of India ...

has been adopted by IVF clinics around the world. More recently, Bourn Hall pioneered the use of

blastocyst The blastocyst is a structure formed in the early embryonic development of mammals. It possesses an inner cell mass (ICM) also known as the ''embryoblast'' which subsequently forms the embryo, and an outer layer of trophoblast cells called th ...

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 to co-founder Professor Robert Edwards. A plaque was unveiled at the Clinic in July 2013 by Louise Brown and Alastair MacDonald - the world's first IVF baby boy - commemorating Steptoe and Edwards. The plaque missed out

who had been the person who chose Bourn Hall, was a co-founder of the clinic and an equal partner in developing IVF. In 2018, to mark the 40th anniversary of IVF, the clinic unveiled an additional memorial to Jean Purdy, the "world's first IVF nurse and embryologist. Co-founder of Bourn Hall Clinic". The current Science Director, appointed in January 2018, is Martyn Blayney MSc, DIP RCPath

References

External links

Bourn Hall Clinic website

Quads revisit IVF clinic BBC news

The Leading Fertility Clinics: Bourn Hall Clinic
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bourn Hall Clinic Medical research institutes in the United Kingdom Obstetrics and gynaecology organizations In vitro fertilisation Research institutes in Cambridgeshire Grade II* listed buildings in Cambridgeshire