More and more People are turning to in vitro fertilization or IVF to have babies. The process can be difficult and requires expensive hormone injections twice a day to mature eggs so they can be retrieved from the body.
New York startup Gameto aims to reduce the burden on patients by maturing the eggs in vitro. The company’s approach replaces 80% of the hormones required for traditional IVF, reducing the length of the treatment cycle to a few days. This suggests a promise of healthy embryos and pregnancy, according to new data released by the company.
Maturing eggs in the lab rather than in the ovaries is not a new idea. In vitro maturation or IVM appeared in the 1990s, but the technology was not widely used because its success rate was lower than that of IVF. During IVM, eggs are extracted and grown in a special mixture of nutrients and growth factors. Using Gameto’s method, eggs are “supported” cells to mature by ovarian derived from stem cells.
exist Preprint online releaseGameto shows that its product called Fertilo results in higher pregnancy rates than conventional IVM. In the first part of the study, 20 patients initially received fortilo to evaluate the safety of the technology. In the second part, another 20 patients were randomly accepted for fertilizer or IVM. Eggs matured with fertilizer are more likely to develop normally, with a standard IVM of 52% and a maturity rate of 70%.
Then, when these eggs are fertilized by sperm, Fertilo results in more feasible embryos and higher pregnancy rates—after one treatment cycle, 44% of patients in the Fertilo group became pregnant, compared with 20% of those receiving IVM. To date, the study has resulted in 15 persistent pregnancy, 13 received Fertilo treatment, and 2 IVM. A patient in the Fertilo group became pregnant naturally after the eggs were retrieved, which was not included in the final analysis. The study was conducted in Mexico and Peru and has not been peer-reviewed.
“The idea for Fortilo is to bring a patient-centric solution that does have empowerment to make it easier for people to build families,” said Gameto’s CEO and founder. Radenkovic actually tested Gameto’s technology On her own egg– Don’t get pregnant, but look at how mature Fortilo is with them.
The ovaries will naturally produce a mature egg every month until menopause. During the IVF cycle, patients self-injected high doses of hormones for 10 to 14 days to stimulate their ovaries to produce many hormones. These lenses can cause mood swings, headaches, bloating, and in rare cases, a painful and potentially serious disease called ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. In the United States, each treatment cycle of stimulants ranges from $4,000 to $7,000, which is probably one-third of the total cost of IVF. Many patients need several cycles to get pregnant.
Using Gameto’s method, the patient took the first two to three days of hormones and then had an egg test. Incubate the eggs with ovarian support cells for about 30 hours. Gameto developed a method to design these specialized germ cells from stem cells. “We were able to use these cells to reproduce the ovaries in vitro,” said Christian Kramme, Gameto’s chief scientific officer.
