Yves Ménézo
The Modern Laboratory · People
The Modern Laboratory
Yves Ménézo
He listened to what the oviduct and womb offer an embryo, and gave embryos in the dish living company until better media arrived.
Reading the fluids. Yves Ménézo is a biochemist who took his PhD in applied biology at the University of Lyon and his Doctor of Science in 1979. In the early 1970s he analysed the secretions of the rabbit oviduct, with Pierre Laviolette, and of the sheep womb at the start of pregnancy. He also worked on the eggs and embryos of cattle. In 1976 he described a synthetic culture medium for the survival and maturation of gametes and for culturing fertilised eggs.
A career between farm and clinic. In 1983 he became a director of research at France's national institute for agricultural research. From 1987 to 1993 he was also an associate professor at Louisiana State University.
Embryos in company. In 1990, working with colleagues at Villeurbanne on the edge of Lyon, he placed spare embryos, judged too poor to freeze, on a layer of kidney-derived Vero cells, a line already used to make vaccines. After five days, 61 percent had become blastocysts, against 3 percent in medium alone. By 1992 his team, now at Bron near Lyon, was transferring co-cultured blastocysts. They also froze them, and about one in five transfers of thawed blastocysts led to pregnancy.
Knowing when to move on. He went on to head a unit for assisted reproduction and genetics there. In 1998 he and colleagues wrote that it was time to replace co-culture with sequential defined media for blastocyst transfer. It is not easy to set aside a method you made your own, and he did it in print. In 1999 he and colleagues reported the birth weights and sex ratio of babies born after blastocyst transfer.
Still asking questions. In recent years he has written about folate, methylation and the one-carbon cycle in eggs, sperm and embryos, and was still publishing in 2025. He has written more than 250 papers and chapters. His honours include laureate status of the French Academy of Medicine and the gold medal of the Institut Dexeus in Barcelona.
About the sources
- Ménézo Y, Elder K, Clement P, Dattilo M, Patrizio P. Fortification with folic acid and early human embryo development: lessons from assisted reproduction. Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics 2025;42(10):3259–3265. PubMed 40817967 (evidence of current activity).
- International IVF Initiative (i3). The embryo in culture: imprinting, oxidative stress and epigenetic homeostasis. Speaker biography of Professor Yves Ménézo. ivfmeeting.com, checked 7 October 2026.
- Ménézo YJ, Chouteau J, Torelló J, Girard A, Veiga A. Birth weight and sex ratio after transfer at the blastocyst stage in humans. Fertility and Sterility 1999;72(2):221–224. PubMed 10438983.
- Ménézo YJ, Hamamah S, Hazout A, Dale B. Time to switch from co-culture to sequential defined media for transfer at the blastocyst stage. Human Reproduction 1998;13(8):2043–2044. PubMed 9756263.
- Ménézo Y, Nicollet B, Herbaut N, André D. Freezing cocultured human blastocysts. Fertility and Sterility 1992;58(5):977–980. PubMed 1426385 (affiliation Bron).
- Ménézo Y, Hazout A, Dumont M, Herbaut N, Nicollet B. Coculture of embryos on Vero cells and transfer of blastocysts in humans. Human Reproduction 1992;7 Suppl 1:101–106.
- Ménézo YJ, Guérin JF, Czyba JC. Improvement of human early embryo development in vitro by coculture on monolayers of Vero cells. Biology of Reproduction 1990;42(2):301–306. PubMed 2337628 (affiliation INSA Villeurbanne).
- Renard JP, Philippon A, Ménézo Y. In-vitro uptake of glucose by bovine blastocysts. Journal of Reproduction and Fertility 1980;58(1):161–164. PubMed 7359473.
- Ménézo Y. Milieu synthétique pour la survie et la maturation des gamètes et pour la culture de l'oeuf fécondé. Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, Série D 1976;282(22):1967–1970. PubMed 821667.
- Ménézo Y. Étude électrophorétique des protéines des sécrétions utérines de la brebis au début de la gestation. Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, Série D 1973;277(3):337–340. PubMed 4211128.
- Ménézo Y, Laviolette P. Constituants aminés des sécrétions tubaires chez la lapine. Annales de Biologie Animale, Biochimie, Biophysique 1972;12(3):383–396. PubMed 4356042.
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Compiled with AI-assisted research and checked against the original sources. Not yet peer-reviewed. Corrections are warmly welcomed.
