The Modern Laboratory · People

Yury Verlinsky was born on 1 September 1943 in Ishim, in the Tyumen region of Siberia. He earned his doctorate in embryology and cytogenetics at Kharkiv University in 1973. In 1979 he emigrated to the United States with his wife and young son. He found work in the cytogenetics laboratory of Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago.

Earlier answers in pregnancy. In the early 1980s Verlinsky was among the first in the world, and the first in the United States, to offer chorionic villus sampling. This test of a small piece of the developing placenta gives families genetic answers earlier than amniocentesis.

Reading the polar body. As an egg matures it sets aside a tiny packet of chromosomes called the first polar body. In 1990, at Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago, Verlinsky's team removed this packet from the eggs of a woman carrying alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency. Testing it showed which eggs held her unaffected copy. Removing the polar body did not harm fertilisation or growth to the blastocyst stage.

A match for a sister. In 2001 Verlinsky's team reported testing embryos both for Fanconi anaemia and for a tissue match with a sick older child. The baby born was free of the disease, and blood from his umbilical cord was used to treat his sister. His group also tested for conditions that appear later in life. They built a bank of embryonic stem cell lines carrying genetic disorders, for research.

Verlinsky wrote about 200 papers and the first books on preimplantation genetics, and was the founding president of the Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis International Society. He died of colon cancer on 16 July 2009, aged 65. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine's scientific director said he had made embryo testing routine, helping countless couples have healthy children.

The IVF Museum · The Modern Laboratory · People
Compiled with AI-assisted research and checked against the original sources. Not yet peer-reviewed. Corrections are warmly welcomed.