Surrogacy agency under UK Government spotlight
The Department of Health and Social Care is currently assessing evidence provided by the Observer newspaper that a surrogacy agency registered in the UK could have broken surrogacy laws...
Melinda Van Kerckvoorde
Melinda Van Kerckvoorde is a Volunteer Writer at BioNews. She is an Associate Consultant at Scendea, supporting clients in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry with regulatory submissions to European and US agencies. Melinda completed her BSc in Biomedicine at Lancaster University and used computational models to understand embryo size regulation during her MPhil in Developmental Biology at the University of Cambridge. She then joined Dr Marta Shahbazi's lab at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology as an intern to study aneuploidy in human embryos. Now, she is looking for a new challenge to spin out more fertility research from labs into the real world and encourage reproductive health awareness.
BioNews Articles by Melinda Van Kerckvoorde
HFEA reports increase in sperm-donor-conceived children
The number of children born in the UK from donor sperm has more than tripled in the past 13 years, according to statistics published by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority...
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts equipment used for embryo biopsy.
30 Years of ICSI: An Injection of Hope for Male Infertility
Thirty years on from the first birth resulting from ICSI, PET's recent discussion event '30 years of ICSI: An Injection of Hope for Male Infertility' invited a panel of experts to discuss the past, present, and future of the technique...
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a human egg soon after fertilisation, with the two parental pronuclei clearly visible.
Exposure to 'forever chemicals' during first trimester could lower sons' sperm count
Lower sperm count, quality and motility in young men may be associated with their mothers' exposure to 'forever chemicals' in the first trimester of pregnancy...
Image by Bill Sanderson via the Wellcome Collection, © Wellcome Trust Ltd 1990. Depicts Laocoön and his family (from Greek and Roman mythology) entwined in coils of DNA.
Fertility clinics impede patients from making meaningful comparisons
The UK Competition and Markets Authority will explore standardising a single IVF cycle package offered by clinics to self-funding patients, in a bid to improve price transparency...
Hyaluronic acid may boost chance of live birth
A large data analysis has found that embryo exposure to hyaluronic acid prior to transfer could improve IVF success rates when using patients' own eggs...
Image by Christoph Bock/Max Planck Institute for Informatics via Wikimedia Commons. Depicts a DNA molecule that is methylated on both strands on the centre cytosine.
Light shed on epigenetic maintenance of ovarian reserve
Egg cells are kept in a form of stasis from when they are first formed in the fetus until they mature in adulthood, by a protein which regulates transcription, a new study in mice has shown...
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a human egg soon after fertilisation, with the two parental pronuclei clearly visible.
First UK medical guidelines issued for trans fertility preservation
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) has published a first draft guideline on improving care for trans and gender diverse people accessing health services...
Dutch donor-conceived people seek answers
A Dutch fertility doctor has been found to be the genetic father of at least three patients conceived in his clinic...