EmbryoGen - an IVF breakthrough?

A new product called EmbryoGen, developed and perfected by Australian researchers for the last two decades, could dramatically improve IVF outcomes for women who suffered miscarriages after fertility treatments in the past. Reproductive biologist Sarah Robertson from the University of Adelaide said that the product, which will be on the market sometime this year, can boost embryo implantation success rates by as much as 40 percent!

EmbryoGen was designed to make the implanted embryos stronger and more likely to survive the early implantation phase. It uses a signaling molecule, GM-CSF, which naturally appears in the mother's body, to enable the embryo to resist stress. The exact workings of this product are hard to understand for anyone without a scientific background, but the message is clear EmbryoGen could help women who previously had miscarriages have healthy babies. Clinical trials showed that the new product raised IVF success rates by 20 percent at 12 weeks gestation, for all women. Those women who had already miscarried following IVF treatments in the past benefited from EmbryoGen even more success rates went up by 40 percent.

Robertson also said that IVF babies tend to have lower birth weights than those who were conceived naturally, and claimed that EmbryoGen could help reduce this weight gap too. "This is a wonderful advance for couples undertaking IVF, particularly those who have previously lost babies in the first trimester. This breakthrough has been 20 years in the making," the reproductive biologist said. "It's enormously rewarding to see one's basic research translate into practical outcomes that will benefit so many families. From day one we went right back to the fundamental biology to see what makes an embryo healthy in its normal environment in the reproductive tract. We discovered that embryo is exposed to growth factor signals from the mother's tissues, which is critical to its optimal development."