Dr. Sher’s accomplishments
■ First to recommend and publish the benefits of the exclusive use of injectable fertility drugs (gonadotropins) to stimulate the woman’s ovaries for in vitro fertilization, or IVF, where an egg is fertilized by sperm in a test tube or elsewhere outside the body. Prior to that, oral fertility drugs had been preferred, with much lower success rates being reported.
■ First to introduce intrauterine (artificial) insemination (IUI) of washed/ enhanced sperm for treating certain forms of infertility.
■ First to report on the ultrasound appearance and thickness of the uterine lining (endometrium) as a predictor of whether the embryo is likely to implant successfully following IVF.
■ First to introduce the technique of “prolonged coasting” to treat women in whom the use of fertility drugs for
IVF resulted in severe “overstimulation,” placing them at risk of life-threatening complications, and thus virtually eliminating such risk.
■ Among the first to identify and treat immunologic abnormalities that prevent implantation of the embryo.
■ First to introduce vaginal Viagra suppositories to improve uterine blood flow and enhance hormonal thickness of the uterine lining.
■ First to recommend the selective use of a blood product (intravenous gammaglobulin ) for treating certain forms of embryo immunologic implantation dysfunction in IVF.
■ Introduced a protocol for ovarian stimulation — the agonist/ antagonist conversion protocol — to improve egg/embryo quality in response to fertility drug stimulation.
■ First to measure a genetic marker and use it to identify the “best individual embryos” (ones most likely to implant and produce a viable pregnancy) for transfer to the uterus.
■ First to show that biopsying embryos to assess their full chromosome integrity (using pre-implantation genetic screening — PGS) can identify those embryos most likely to be “competent” to propagate viable, healthy babies and a much lower risk of miscarriage.
■ First to show, by using PGS, that an embryo resulting from fertilization of an egg that has all of its chromosomes present has a much improved ability to implant successfully and produce a normal baby.
■ First to apply egg biopsy and PGS to the select chromosomally normal eggs for freezing and banking (fertility preservation), leading to a four- to six-fold improvement in the birth rate per frozen egg.
■ Among the first to report that some embryos that have an abnormal chromosome component have the ability to self-correct in the uterus and proceed to propagate healthy babies.