Project description
Improving IVF success through optimised embryo development
Infertility treatments such as in vitro fertilisation (IVF) remain emotionally and financially demanding for many couples worldwide. A major limitation is that most retrieved eggs fail to develop into viable embryos in laboratory conditions. Existing approaches mainly focus on selecting the highest-quality embryos rather than improving early development itself. The EIC-funded OFFSPRING project addresses this bottleneck by optimising embryo culture conditions based on metabolic requirements. It builds on breakthroughs such as blastoid stem-cell models and identification of ideal molecular environments for development. These findings, developed further through dawn-bio, enable systematic exploration of early embryo biology. Ultimately, the project will test these advances and strengthen Europe’s position in the fertility biotechnology sector.
Objective
"Millions of couples experience the emotional and financial strain of in vitro fertilization (IVF) failures. The core problem in IVF isn't its complexity, but a single, major bottleneck: most retrieved eggs fail to develop into viable embryos in the lab. This high rate of embryo loss is a massive and costly failure point for patients and clinics. While recent innovations attempt to select the ""best"" embryos from a limited, poor-quality pool, these methods don't solve the underlying problem. Ethical and practical constraints around human embryo research have made it impossible to systematically optimize in vitro embryo culture during IVF, until now.
OFFSPRING offers a radically new approach to transform IVF outcomes. Instead of selecting existing embryos, OFFSPRING aims to give every fertilized egg the chance to develop into a high-quality embryo by meeting its specific metabolic needs, creating a larger pool of viable embryos for a successful pregnancy. This approach is built on two ERC-funded breakthroughs:
• A stem cell model of embryos called blastoids, allowing for the first time systematic discovery of the drivers of early embryo development.
• The identification of the ideal molecular environment for healthy embryo development, discovered via blastoid screenings in an ERC PoC project that led to dawn-bio, a preclinical stage startup biotech company.
By addressing the primary bottleneck for IVF patients to get a baby, and by developing a product that has the potential to set a new standard in reproductive medicine, we are poised to disrupt the $34 billion Fertility market. OFFSPRING is designed to perform the critical validation needed to translate these ERC-funded breakthroughs into a de-risked, investable commercial proposition. It is the first step in our long-term vision to build dawn-bio into a European global leader in reproductive medicine that leverages our proprietary blastoid platform to create a pipeline of innovations in foetal and maternal health."
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- medical and health sciences clinical medicine gynaecology reproductive medicine
- medical and health sciences clinical medicine obstetrics
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.3.1 - The European Innovation Council (EIC)
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-EIC-2025-TRANSITIONOPEN
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1030 WIEN
Austria
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