Hubert Joris
The Modern Laboratory · People
The Modern Laboratory
Hubert Joris
The embryologist whose careful hands helped make ICSI work, and who wrote down how others could do it.
Hubert Joris worked in the laboratory of the Centre for Reproductive Medicine at the Free University of Brussels (VUB) in the years when ICSI was born. His name is second on the 1992 Lancet paper that reported the first pregnancies, alongside Gianpiero Palermo, Paul Devroey and André Van Steirteghem.
The bench behind the papers. Over the next decade he co-authored dozens of Brussels studies on the practical details of ICSI. They asked how best to remove the cells around the egg and whether sperm needed special preparation. They also asked where in the egg the sperm should be placed, and how to use sperm taken from the testis. In 1998 he was first author of a guide to setting up an ICSI laboratory and performing the injection.
Biopsy, freezing and the children. He also worked with the Brussels genetics team on testing embryos for inherited disease. He led studies on embryo biopsy and on how biopsied embryos survive freezing. He was a co-author of early follow-up studies of children born after ICSI, including a 1998 Lancet report on their development at two years of age.
Later in his career he turned to research on culture and vitrification for IVF laboratories. He has written textbook chapters on consumables for the IVF laboratory and on hydraulic manipulators for ICSI. In 2026 he co-authored a study of a single-step method for vitrifying and warming blastocysts.
Also see: Gianpiero D. Palermo, André Van Steirteghem, Paul Devroey, Zsolt Peter Nagy
About the sources
- Gunst J, Joris H, Vynck M, et al. Validation and clinical study of single-step vitrification combined with single-step warming of human blastocysts. Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics 2026;43(3):837–850. PubMed 41686351.
- Joris H. Consumables for the IVF Laboratory. In: Manual of Embryo Culture in Human Assisted Reproduction. Cambridge University Press, 2021. DOI 10.1017/9781108874014.004.
- Joris H. Hydraulic Manipulators for ICSI. In: In Vitro Fertilization. Springer, 2019. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-43011-9_35.
- Joris H, De Vos A, Janssens R, Devroey P, Liebaers I, Van Steirteghem A. Comparison of the results of human embryo biopsy and outcome of PGD after zona drilling using acid Tyrode medium or a laser. Human Reproduction 2003;18(9):1896–1902. PubMed 12923146 (author address: Centre for Reproductive Medicine, Dutch-speaking Brussels Free University; hubert.joris@az.vub.ac.be).
- Joris H, Van den Abbeel E, De Vos A, Van Steirteghem A. Reduced survival after human embryo biopsy and subsequent cryopreservation. Human Reproduction 1999;14(11):2833–2837. PubMed 10548632.
- Bonduelle M, Joris H, Hofmans K, Liebaers I, Van Steirteghem A. Mental development of 201 ICSI children at 2 years of age. Lancet 1998;351(9115):1553. PubMed 10326540.
- Joris H, Nagy Z, Van de Velde H, De Vos A, Van Steirteghem A. Intracytoplasmic sperm injection: laboratory set-up and injection procedure. Human Reproduction 1998;13 Suppl 1:76–86. PubMed 9663772.
- Van de Velde H, Nagy ZP, Joris H, De Vos A, Van Steirteghem AC. Effects of different hyaluronidase concentrations and mechanical procedures for cumulus cell removal on the outcome of intracytoplasmic sperm injection. Human Reproduction 1997;12(10):2246–2250. PubMed 9402289.
- Nagy ZP, Liu J, Joris H, et al. The influence of the site of sperm deposition and mode of oolemma breakage at intracytoplasmic sperm injection on fertilization and embryo development rates. Human Reproduction 1995;10(12):3171–3177. PubMed 8822437.
- Liu J, Nagy Z, Joris H, Tournaye H, Devroey P, Van Steirteghem AC. Intracytoplasmic sperm injection does not require special treatment of the spermatozoa. Human Reproduction 1994;9(6):1127–1130. PubMed 7962387.
- Palermo G, Joris H, Devroey P, Van Steirteghem AC. Pregnancies after intracytoplasmic injection of single spermatozoon into an oocyte. Lancet 1992;340(8810):17–18. PubMed 1351601.
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Compiled with AI-assisted research and checked against the original sources. Not yet peer-reviewed. Corrections are warmly welcomed.
