Piero Donini
The Modern Laboratory · People
The Modern Laboratory
Piero Donini
An Italian chemist who first drew a fertility hormone out of the urine of women past the menopause.
A chemist's hormone. Pietro Donini, known as Piero, was a chemist in pharmaceutical research in Italy. From 1948 he worked on human gonadotrophins, the hormones that stimulate the ovary and testis. In 1949 he succeeded in extracting and purifying gonadotrophin from the urine of women past the menopause. The preparation, human menopausal gonadotrophin or hMG, was first registered in Italy in 1950.
Working with Lunenfeld. Bruno Lunenfeld, then a young doctor in Israel, saw what this material might do for women who could not ovulate. The two worked together for many years. In 1964 Donini and his colleagues described new ways of purifying gonadotrophin from menopausal urine. In 1966, with Lunenfeld, they reported separating its two hormones, FSH and LH. In 1974 Donini and Lunenfeld wrote together on the clinical results of gonadotrophin treatment.
Little is recorded of his life beyond his scientific papers. Yet the hormone he purified became the first step of IVF for millions of women.
Also see: Bruno Lunenfeld
About the sources
- Merck KGaA corporate history, “Story: Infertility” (emdgroup.com), consulted October 2026: “In 1949, Piero Donini, a chemist, succeeds in extracting and purifying gonadotropin from the urine of postmenopausal women.”
- AboutPharma, “Gonadotropina, il farmaco contro l'infertilità che ringrazia suore e Vaticano” (aboutpharma.com): Pietro Donini, known as Piero, began work on human gonadotrophins in 1948; first hMG paper 1949; product registered in Italy 1950.
- Lunenfeld B, et al. The development of gonadotropins for clinical use in the treatment of infertility. Frontiers in Endocrinology 2019;10:429 (PMC6616070): first hMG preparations registered in Italy in 1950.
- Endometriosis.org congress report: “GNRH2011: 50 years of the human clinical use of gonadotrophins” (Lunenfeld developed hMG together with Piero Donini).
- Donini P, Puzzuoli D, Montezemolo R. Purification of gonadotrophin from human menopausal urine. Acta Endocrinologica 1964 (PubMed 14131763); Donini P, Puzzuoli D, D'Alessio I. Purification of gonadotrophin from menopausal urine by gel filtration on Sephadex. Acta Endocrinologica 1964 (PubMed 14131764).
- Donini P, Puzzuoli D, D'Alessio I, Lunenfeld B, Eshkol A, Parlow AF. Purification and separation of follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH) from human postmenopausal gonadotrophin (HMG). Acta Endocrinologica 1966;52:186–198.
- Donini P, Lunenfeld B. Clinical results of gonadotropins. Acta Europaea Fertilitatis 1974 (PubMed 4463661).
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Compiled with AI-assisted research and checked against the original sources. Not yet peer-reviewed. Corrections are warmly welcomed.
