Joyce Harper

Research Summary

Principal investigator of UCL Centre for PG & D and person responsible for the HFEA Research Licence and head of research and development at the Assisted Conception Unit, UCLH. UCL Centre for PG & D covers a range of research interests in preimplantation genetics, ranging from DNA damage and aneuploidy in sperm to methylation patterns in human embryos. At the London Fertility Centre I was working on ways to help identify the best embryo for transfer. When I initially started work on PGD (Wellcome grant) I used FISH to examine chromosome arrangements in human embryos and was the first to report the high levels of mosaicism that have now been observed by many other groups internationally. I have also been trying to elucidate the mechanism of these abnormalities, which includes abnormalities in cell cycle checkpoints. This work has been sponsored by an MRC JREI Equipment Grant, Tommy's Campaign and UCL Special Trustees. Our Wellbeing grant was used to apply these techniques to study human oocytes. I am principal investigator of UCL Centre for PG & D and person responsible for the HFEA Research Licence. I am head of research and development at the Assisted Conception Unit, UCLH. See publication list (link to this page). Main topics: * Mechanism of mosaicism in preimplantation embryos * Whole genome amplification and microarray methods to use on single human embryonic cells * DNA fragmentation and aneuploidy in sperm * Methylation patterns of preimplantation embryos * Metabolomics of the human embryo and relation to aneuploidy * All aspects of infertility related research