Academic-Business Partnership Developing IVF Technology

Sarah Robertson (Univ. of Adelaide)

A reproductive biologist at University of Adelaide in Australia has discovered molecules in a mother’s tissue that can help women who have suffered previous miscarriages after in-vitro fertilization (IVF) improve their rates of subsequent IVF success. Professor Sarah Robertson (pictured right), who made the discovery, is partnering with a Danish company to develop a product that can improve women’s IVF embryo implantation rates.

In a clinical trial, Robertson and ORIGIO a/s — a company that specializes in assisted reproductive technologies — have shown for the first time that growth factor molecules are critical to ensuring optimal embryo development. The new product from this collaboration, called EmbryoGen, contains a signaling molecule called Granulocyte-Macrophage Colony-Stimulating Factor or GM-CSF found naturally in the mother’s tissues which protects the embryo from stress, making it stronger and more robust in the early implantation period.

The trial involved 1,319 IVF patients exposed to either EmbryoGen or standard IVF embryo media. The results show an average of 20 percent improvement in embryo implantation rates at 12 weeks for all IVF women whose embryos developed in EmbryoGen. Women who had previously miscarried showed by week 12 a 40 percent increase in implantation success.

ORIGIO expects to introduce EmbryoGen in Europe and the Middle East by mid-2011 and in the U.S. in late 2012.

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