Utrecht University Professor Receives ZonMW Open Competition Grant

Marta de Ruijter-Villani, Assistant Professor at Clinical Sciences and UMCU, receives a ZonMw Open Competition grant together with Geert Kops and Takashi Hiiragi. Attached to the grant is a sum of €770,000, which the researchers will use over the next five years to investigate the occurrence of aneuploidy in human oocytes and embryos. Aneuploidy is an abnormal number of chromosomes.

One in five couples struggle to conceive children. Some of these couples seek the solution in assisted reproduction and in vitro fertilisation, or IVF. Yet some 70 per cent of IVF attempts are found to be unsuccessful. The main cause is aneuploidy: an incorrect number of chromosomes in the embryonic cells.

In this project, researchers will study the occurrence of aneuploidy in early human development. In doing so, they will combine expertise in molecular mechanisms of aneuploidy in cancer, clinical embryology and advanced microscopic visualisation of embryonic development. To do so, they will use oocytes and early embryos from cows, which are very similar to those of humans. The researchers aim to use the results to contribute to future strategies to prevent aneuploidy in early in vitro embryos.