Jon Tilly

Exclusive: Meet the world’s first baby born with an assist from stem cells

Augment emerged from a breakthrough made in 2004 by biologist Jonathan Tilly, then at Harvard Medical School and now chair of biology at Northeastern University. He found that cells scraped from the outer surface of the ovary contain the precursor cells that can provide a more reliable source of energy to older eggs. “The technique […]

MIT Technology Review

Engineering the perfect baby

Tilly predicted that the whole end-to-end technology—cells to stem cells, stem cells to sperm or egg and then to offspring—would end up being worked out first in animals, such as cattle, either by his lab or by companies such as eGenesis, the spin-off from the Church lab working on livestock. But he isn’t sure what […]

Maclean's

Rewinding the biological clock

Reproductive biologists have been working for decades to solve one of the great mysteries of human fertility: why do women produce all the eggs they will ever have while still in the womb, only to have most of those eggs die off before birth, and many more before the woman reaches puberty? Jonathan Tilly, chair […]