Infertility affects one out of six couples worldwide, and more than 25 million people in Europe alone.
In order to realise their legitimate desire to have a baby, infertile couples go through a variety of medical procedures known as Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART). Approximately 2.5 million ART cycles are performed each year worldwide, and Europe is the world leader with almost 50% of all reported treatment cycles. In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), which consists in implanting one or many fertilized eggs (embryos) in the uterus, is one of the most common ART techniques, with more than 1.69 million cycles performed globally every year.
In IVF procedures embryologists currently have to choose the most suitable embryos to implant among a pool of up to a dozen candidates.
Such screening is done through a visual morphological analysis made with a microscope, assessing qualitative information as shape, symmetry and integrity. The problem is that this selection process leads to a frustratingly low success rate: just 33% of women get pregnant after the first cycle, as there is no means for the embryologist to identify the most vital embryos in the pool. Such failure in embryo selection has a huge impact in terms of cost, it increases time to pregnancy and poses a tremendous psychological burden to the couple.
Embryos own a wealth of still unexploited metabolic information, that are fundamental for determining their viability and survival expectancy. However, the means to access such information non-invasively is still elusive. With Embryospin we are developing a solution to make this possible. With a non-invasive test we'll give doctors access to crucial information, from inside the embryo, non-invasively.
