For London Women’s Clinic, it was in Cambridge where it all began. It was in a laboratory hidden away in a historic Cambridge site that Nobel Laureate Sir Robert Edwards finally unravelled the science of human conception. With his gynaecologist colleague Patrick Steptoe, Sir Edwards brought about the first ever conception of a baby in a glass Petri dish. Born in 1978, Louise Joy Brown was the world’s first IVF baby.

When LWC first opened our doors in London, Sir Edwards, known to many as Bob, served as the clinic’s first and founding Scientific Director. It is no small coincidence that LWC’s present Scientific Director, Dr Kamal Ahuja, was one of very research students that worked alongside Edwards in his Cambridge lab in the early 1980s – seminal years for the science and practice of IVF.

IVF comes home to Cambridge

It is a matter of great pride to us at London Women’s Clinic, here in Harley Street and across the country, that we are now opening a new centre in the heart of Cambridge. LWC Cambridge is only a short walk from that same laboratory where Sir Edwards and his research colleagues first assembled the jigsaw of human conception. Today, London Women’s Clinic with its 16 regional centres throughout the UK, is at the leading edge of many of the great advances of contemporary reproductive medicine, and responsible for the birth of more than 25,000 babies throughout our 30-year history.

 ‘It feels like IVF is finally coming home,’ said Dr Ahuja on the opening of our Cambridge clinic, some 40 years after he first set foot in the city as a young scholarship student at St John’s College, Cambridge. The Cambridge clinic represents the cutting edge of contemporary IVF, granting access to the latest science, and new developments including Kind iVF, a groundbreaking new affordable IVF pathway designed in partnership with LWC.

Three decades of innovation, research and collaboration

In the past three decades, LWC has forged our reputation in many emerging techniques of reproductive medicine. As the only fertility clinic in the UK with a research license, our contribution to the scholarship runs across the board, but is present most notably in embryo screening and egg sharing, in the IVF treatment of same-sex female couples and single women, and in the fertility preservation procedure of egg freezing.

In our research and clinical programmes in egg freezing, LWC has established ourself as Britain’s largest and leading IVF centre. Notably our partner association with London Egg Bank has seen LWC grow to be the UK’s largest provider of home-based donor eggs for the donation treatment of women unable to produce their own eggs.  Our association with London Sperm Bank has driven our treatment of singles and same-sex couples, as well as a growing number of surrogate and ‘shared motherhood’ arrangements. Many of these treatments have been, for many years, underscored by our collaborative research with the Centre for Family Research at Free School Lane at the University of Cambridge.

All these cutting-edge techniques, part of a world-class IVF programme, will be available at LWC’s new Cambridge clinic on Mawson Road. ‘These are services of which Bob Edwards would surely have approved,’ offered Dr Ahuja. It is also fitting that LWC’s opening in Cambridge should coincide with the BFI premiere in October of a new major Netflix film, Joy. This wonderful tribute to Sir Edwards life stars Bill Nighy, James Norton and Thomasin McKenzie, and celebrates the pioneering work of Edwards, Steptoe and their nurse Jean Purdy in realising the birth of Louise Brown, much of it in their Cambridge laboratory. Read more in the very journal Sir Edwards founded, RBMO – Ode to Joy, or watch the trailer here: Joy | Official Trailer | Netflix.

Local personalised care with access to specialist laboratory services

The opening of a Cambridge clinic adds another local centre of excellence to the LWC clinics already available in the south-east and east. Our groundbreaking ‘hub-and-spoke’ model has defined LWC’s growth throughout the past three decades. Patients have welcomed consultations, counselling, ultrasound scanning and medical tests at a local centre with follow-ups at a specialist hub. In the case of Cambridge, all specialist services will be provided at LWC Harley Street, just three stops from Kings Cross station (Figure 2).

LWC Cambridge is local, accessible and – we hope – will be acknowledged for its warmth, expertise and high success rates. ‘It’s a provision of IVF which is in keeping with modern times in terms of quality, accessibility and convenience,’ shares Professor Nick Macklon, Group Medical Director, ‘and which we’re sure patients in Cambridge will appreciate. For us LWC Cambridge is a kind of homecoming, a natural place to be.’

Centrally located

Our new location at 52 Mawson Road is only an 8-minute walk away from Cambridge train station, with an experienced team led by Dr Arthi Thangavel, Fertility Specialist, and our Nurse Manager, Chantelle Maison. We are excited to bring our wide range of fertility treatments to those living in Cambridgeshire.

LWC Cambridge is now open for bookings. Please call 02075634309 for further information or visit our website. The clinic also offers Kind iVF, a groundbreaking affordable IVF pathway developed in partnership with London Women's Clinic. You can find more information here.