Professor Dame Lesley Regan MD

Lesley Regan graduated from the Royal Free Hospital London in 1980 having been inspired to take up Obstetrics & Gynaecology by one of her teachers. She moved to Cambridge in 1984, to take up her first registrar post in O&G at Addenbrookes Hospital. At an early stage in her clinical training, she was struck by how little was understood about the causes of miscarriage – the commonest complication of pregnancy. During her time in Cambridge, she was introduced to the excitement of clinical and laboratory research and was awarded her MD thesis entitled “Epidemiology and mechanisms of sporadic and recurrent miscarriage” in 1989 following a secondment to the MRC Embryo & Gamete Research Group. In 1985 she was invited to become a teaching fellow at Girton College and a year later was appointed Director of Medical Studies, a post that she continued to hold until she moved back to London.

In 1990 she was appointed Consultant and Senior Lecturer in Obstetrics & Gynaecology at St Mary’s Hospital, London and in 1996 took up her current post as Chair and Head of Department there. Professor Regan is Director of the Recurrent Miscarriage Service at St Mary’s, a multidisciplinary team that she has developed to provide comprehensive investigations and treatment for couples with a history of recurrent early and late miscarriages. This service is now recognized internationally, receiving some 800 new referrals per year and continuing to provide antenatal care for many thousands more couples during their subsequent high-risk pregnancies. By encouraging close collaborative links between the clinic and the laboratory, her research team has been instrumental in furthering our understanding and treatment of a variety of causes of pregnancy loss, but in particular the contribution that the Antiphospholipid Syndrome and other thrombophilic disorders make to reproductive failure. In 2005, she received a “Woman of Achievement Award” in recognition of her services to Reproductive Medicine.