Jacques Cohen
The Modern Laboratory · People
The Modern Laboratory
Jacques Cohen
A Dutch-born embryologist whose fine glass tools opened the egg's shell, first to let sperm in and then to let embryos out.
Jacques Cohen was born in The Hague in 1951. He studied at Leiden University, completing a master's degree in reproductive biology in 1978, and took his doctorate at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. From 1982 to 1985 he worked at Cambridge University and Bourn Hall Clinic, in the laboratory of Robert Edwards.
Freezing the blastocyst. At Bourn Hall, Cohen and his colleagues froze human embryos at the blastocyst stage, using glycerol to protect them. In 1985 they reported two pregnancies after thawed blastocysts were returned to eleven women.
Opening the shell. Cohen then moved to Atlanta, where he held a post at Emory University and worked in the laboratory of Reproductive Biology Associates. There he and his colleagues used fine glass needles to make a small opening in the zona pellucida, the clear shell around the egg. They called it partial zona dissection, and reported their first results in 1988. In 1990 the same team showed that a small opening could help embryos hatch and implant. This became known as assisted hatching.
New York and New Jersey. At Cornell University Medical College in New York, Cohen worked with Santiago Munné on counting chromosomes in single embryo cells. He later moved to Saint Barnabas Medical Center in New Jersey. There, in 1997, his team reported a birth after a little cytoplasm from a donor egg was added to the mother's eggs.
Cohen has written more than 300 publications and holds a dozen patents. He helped to found Alpha, the society of scientists in reproductive medicine, and the Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis International Society. He is emeritus chief editor of Reproductive BioMedicine Online. He also directs an IVF laboratory for a joint programme of the National Institutes of Health and Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
Also see: Robert Edwards, Santiago Munné, Jon W. Gordon, Yury Verlinsky, Alan Handyside
About the sources
- COGI Congress, faculty biography: Jacques Cohen (education, Bourn Hall 1982 to 1985, publications and patents, Alpha and PGDIS, ART Institute of Washington). Opened October 2026.
- Wikipedia, Jacques Cohen (embryologist): birth 26 December 1951, The Hague; Leiden and Erasmus degrees. Opened October 2026.
- Cohen J, Scott R, Schimmel T, Levron J, Willadsen S. Birth of infant after transfer of anucleate donor oocyte cytoplasm into recipient eggs. The Lancet 1997;350(9072):186–187. PMID 9250192.
- Munné S, Lee A, Rosenwaks Z, Grifo J, Cohen J. Diagnosis of major chromosome aneuploidies in human preimplantation embryos. Human Reproduction 1993;8(12):2185–2191 (New York Hospital, Cornell University Medical Center). PMID 8150922.
- Cohen J, Elsner C, Kort H, Malter H, Massey J, Mayer MP, Wiemer K. Impairment of the hatching process following IVF in the human and improvement of implantation by assisting hatching using micromanipulation. Human Reproduction 1990;5(1):7–13 (Reproductive Biology Associates, Atlanta). PMID 2324246.
- Cohen J, Malter H, Fehilly C, Wright G, Elsner C, Kort H, Massey J. Implantation of embryos after partial opening of oocyte zona pellucida to facilitate sperm penetration. The Lancet 1988;2(8603):162. PMID 2899210.
- Cohen J, Simons RF, Edwards RG, Fehilly CB, Fishel SB. Pregnancies following the frozen storage of expanding human blastocysts. Journal of In Vitro Fertilization and Embryo Transfer 1985;2(2):59–64. PMID 4020239.
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