More and more People are turning to in vitro fertilization or IVF to have babies. This process can be difficult, and to mature the eggs, you will need two costly hormone injections twice a day, twice a day, to allow them to be recovered from the body.
New York startup Gameto is aiming to reduce this burden on patients by maturing the eggs outside the body instead. The company’s method replaces 80% of the hormone injections required for traditional IVF, reducing the length of the treatment cycle for several days. New data released by the company shows that it is expected to produce healthy embryos and pregnancy.
Maturing eggs in the lab, not in the ovaries, is not a new idea. Although in vitro maturation, or IVM, emerged in the 1990s, this technique has not been widely used due to its lower success rate than IVF. During IVM, eggs are extracted and grown in a special formulation of nutrients and growth factors. With GameTo’s approach, eggs mature in ovarian “support” cells derived from stem cells.
in Preprints posted onlineCameto has shown that its product, called Fertilo, has a higher pregnancy rate than traditional IVMs. In the first part of this study, the first 20 patients received fertile to assess the safety of the technology. In Part 2, a further 20 patients were randomised and administered either fertilizer or IVM. Mature eggs in Fertilo were more likely to occur normally, with a maturation rate of 70% compared to 52% using standard IVM.
When these eggs were fertilized with sperm, the fertilizer resulted in more viable embryos and higher pregnancy rates. 44% of patients in the fertilizer group became pregnant after one treatment cycle, while 20% who received IVM became pregnant. So far, this study has resulted in 15 continuous pregnancies, 13 from fertile treatment and two pregnancies from IVM. One patient in the Fertilo group became naturally pregnant after egg collection and was not included in the final analysis. The study, conducted in Mexico and Peru, has not yet been peer-reviewed.
“The idea at Fertilo is to bring about patient-centric solutions. This really empowers and makes it much easier for people to start a family,” says Dina Radenkovic, CEO and founder of Gameto. Radenkovic actually tested Gameto’s technology On her own egg– You won’t get pregnant, but to see how well Fertilo has done in maturing them.
The ovaries naturally produce one mature egg per month until menopause. In the IVF cycle, patients self-induce high doses of hormones for 10-14 days to stimulate the ovaries and produce many of them. This shot causes mood swings, headaches, bloating, and, in rare cases, painful, potentially serious conditions called ovarian hyperpain syndrome. In the US, stimulants range from $4,000 to $7,000 per treatment cycle, which corresponds to one-third of the total cost of IVF. And many patients need several cycles to get pregnant.
With Gameto’s method, patients will take the hormones for the first 2-3 days and receive egg recovery. The eggs are incubated with ovarian support cells for approximately 30 hours. Cameto has developed a method for designing these specialized germ cells from stem cells. “These cells can be used to replicate the ovaries outside the body,” says Christian Kramme, Gameto’s chief science officer.
