A university spin-out that aims to make IVF more successful and accessible has raised £3.5 million to develop a tiny liquid circuit for use in fertility clinics.
Early trials suggest that IVFmicro’s product can improve embryo quality and quantity by at least 15 per cent.
It handles an embryo and a small amount of fluid in a “microfluidic” device, a tiny chip that precisely moves and mixes very small amounts of liquid through microscopic channels. The product represents a change from the traditional “petri dish” approach to fertilisation. Embryos are loaded into channels the size of a human hair that recall the natural environment of the body.
The company claims this could significantly increase the chances of pregnancy while reducing the number of treatment cycles that patients need, as it improves the number of viable embryos available for transfer and the likelihood that one will implant and result in a pregnancy. IVFmicro has been backed by the Northern Gritstone investment company, chaired by Lord O’Neill of Gatley.
Helen Picton, the company’s scientific director and Virginia Pensabene, the company’s chief executive, started IVFmicro as a research project at Leeds University in 2017 when they realised that combining their expertise could produce a potential scientific breakthrough for reproduction.
Picton, a professor of reproduction and early development, was part of the team that helped the first woman to have a baby from a frozen ovary. She has worked on treatments for young girls and women who are about to go through cancer therapies, where they would stand a high risk of losing their future fertility.
Helen Picton and Virginia Pensabene
Pensabene, a biomedical engineer, is an expert in the field of microfluidics, who has worked on using the technology to model human organs for drug testing.
She said: “We have been able to show that we can grow embryos and support their development much better than the standard methods. Usually, you start with a very limited pool of embryos and fertilise with sperm. Often they don’t develop well, so they don’t have the quality needed to implant successfully and to complete a successful pregnancy, or not all of them develop.”
The scientists have conducted experiments using large animal embryos, which resemble human ones. Using sheep, they have found that the rate of development has doubled using the microfluidic device and the pregnancy rate has increased. If the initial implantation does not go well, there are more, high-quality embryos to try again.
Northern Gritstone, which backs university spinouts and start-ups from the north of England, is the lead investor, along with the government’s Innovate UK Investor Partnerships programme.
Duncan Johnson, the chief executive of Northern Gritstone, said: “IVFmicro is a brilliant example of the world-class innovation emerging from the northern arc’s universities, combining scientific excellence with a clear commercial vision to tackle the societal challenge of infertility.”
