Disrupting IVF? Baby Born From Egg Matured Outside of Mother’s Body.
A company called Gameto claims to have successfully matured eggs outside of the female body, a development that could revolutionize the in vitro fertilization (IVF) process. “We are thrilled to announce a medical milestone–the world’s first live birth using our product, Fertilo, that matures eggs outside the body,” the company posted on X last week.
Gameto’s process involves extracting immature eggs from a woman’s body and then using “engineered, young ovarian support cells to recreate the natural egg maturation process in a laboratory setting.” This process “reduces the duration of treatment cycles to just three days” and “replaces 80% of hormone injections required with traditional IVF,” the company says.
Making IVF Better
IVF has helped countless people with fertility issues to start families, but it remains incredibly taxing on the mother’s body even before a successful pregnancy starts. In a typical IVF process, eggs mature within a woman’s body as they would with a non-assisted conception. In order to ensure that the woman produces at least one and ideally multiple eggs, she’s generally given hormone injections for up to two weeks beforehand, in addition to other drugs.
These hormones and medications can induce a host of side effects. These include headaches, mood swings, insomnia, hot flashes, abdominal pain, pain at the injection site, and, in an estimated 1 to 5 percent of women, ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. Ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome involves a swelling of the ovaries that can cause mild pain, nausea, and other unpleasant side effects in mild cases and, in severe cases, rapid weight gain, severe pain, shortness of breath, kidney problems, and blood clots. Ovarian stimulation processes can also increase the risk of ectopic pregnancy.
A process to mature eggs outside of a woman’s ovaries could be beneficial for avoiding these side effects, and be especially useful for more at-risk populations. It could also significantly decrease the amount of time needed for the IVF process.
‘A Turning Point in Reproductive Health’
Gameto claims not only to have successfully matured eggs outside of the body but to have done so for a pregnancy that resulted in a recent birth.
“On Saturday, December 7th, a healthy baby girl was born in Lima, Peru, after using the Fertilo protocol at our partner clinic [Clinica Concebir],” Gameto reported. “This marks the first ever human birth that occurred as a result of” this technology.
“Fertilo’s innovative approach made the physical experience easier and also lightened the emotional burden of many hormone injections,” said the unnamed mother of the child in a statement put out by Gameto.
Undoubtedly, some people will balk at this advance, viewing it as unnatural and thus, somehow, suspect. But not so long ago, many people viewed all assisted reproduction with suspicion or doubt; now, it’s mainstream and commonplace.
If Gameto’s process can help more people who want to have children to do so, and can make the process less physically arduous and time consuming, these are undoubtedly good things.
“By overcoming the major challenges of conventional IVF, such as long treatment cycles, significant side effects, and the emotional and physical strain, Fertilo provides a potentially faster, safer, and more accessible solution for families,” said Dina Radenkovic, co-founder and CEO of Gameto, in a statement. “This milestone marks a turning point in reproductive health and highlights the first application of [Induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) ] technology
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