Marcos Meseguer
The Modern Laboratory · People
The Modern Laboratory
Marcos Meseguer
A Valencia embryologist who matched embryo timings to implantation and helped make morphokinetics an everyday word.
Training. Marcos Meseguer studied biological sciences at the University of Valencia and held a pre-doctoral fellowship at St Mary's Hospital, University of Manchester. He received his doctorate in obstetrics and gynaecology, with the European Doctorate, from the University of Valencia in 2002, and later a master's degree in research methods and statistics from the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
Where the embryo meets the womb. His early research looked at implantation from the side of the endometrium. In 2001 he was first author of a study showing that the surface mucin MUC1 in the lining of the womb rises under progesterone and is reduced locally by a human blastocyst in culture. He went on to co-direct the andrology laboratory of the Instituto Valenciano de Infertilidad in Valencia.
Timing and implantation. In 2011, in Human Reproduction, Meseguer and his colleagues reported on embryos from 285 couples, photographed every 15 minutes in five focal planes. They analysed 247 transferred embryos whose fate was clear, because all or none of the embryos in each transfer had implanted. Embryos that implanted tended to reach five cells within a certain window, between about 49 and 57 hours after sperm injection, and to move quickly from three cells to four. Embryos with several nuclei at the four-cell stage, very uneven cells at two cells, or a sudden split into three cells rarely implanted. The team proposed a model that sorted embryos into groups by their chance of implantation.
Later work. He went on to test time-lapse culture in larger clinical studies, including a randomised trial published in 2014, and edited the book Time-Lapse Microscopy in In-Vitro Fertilization (2016). His honours include a prize paper award from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and the Robert Edwards prize paper award of Reproductive BioMedicine Online. He remains a scientific supervisor and senior embryologist in Valencia, where his recent work studies artificial intelligence for embryo selection.
About the sources
- Europe PMC records of 2026 papers by Meseguer M (affiliation IVI Valencia and IVI Foundation, Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria La Fe), including work on artificial intelligence in embryo selection.
- ivfmeeting.com (International IVF Initiative), "Session 20: The future of embryology. Technological advant-gardes in embryo selection", speaker biography of Marcos Meseguer.
- Cambridge University Press, Time-Lapse Microscopy in In-Vitro Fertilization, edited by Marcos Meseguer, published 29 January 2016.
- Rubio I, Galán A, Larreategui Z, Ayerdi F, Bellver J, Herrero J, Meseguer M. Clinical validation of embryo culture and selection by morphokinetic analysis: a randomized, controlled trial. Fertility and Sterility 2014;102:1287–1294. PubMed 25217875.
- Meseguer M, Rubio I, Cruz M, Basile N, Marcos J, Requena A. Embryo incubation and selection in a time-lapse monitoring system improves pregnancy outcome compared with a standard incubator: a retrospective cohort study. Fertility and Sterility 2012;98:1481–1489. PubMed 22975113.
- Meseguer M, Herrero J, Tejera A, Hilligsøe KM, Ramsing NB, Remohí J. The use of morphokinetics as a predictor of embryo implantation. Human Reproduction 2011;26(10):2658–2671. PubMed 21828117.
- Meseguer M, Aplin JD, Caballero-Campo P, O'Connor JE, Martín JC, Remohí J, Pellicer A, Simón C. Human endometrial mucin MUC1 is up-regulated by progesterone and down-regulated in vitro by the human blastocyst. Biology of Reproduction 2001;64:590–601. PubMed 11159362.
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Compiled with AI-assisted research and checked against the original sources. Not yet peer-reviewed. Corrections are warmly welcomed.
