Evelyne Vanneste

Ms Vanneste and her team studied each cell from 23 three or four day-old IVF embryos from young (less than 35 years old), fertile couples who had asked for preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). PGD is carried out where one or both parents have a known genetic abnormality, in this case an X-linked disorder or the microdeletions (loss of a tiny piece of a chromosome) that can cause such disorders as the cancer predisposition syndrome neurofibromatosis type 1.