As many as 1.5 million married couples in the United States have a difficult time starting a family, and many of them turn to fertility experts for help. Now a new technology is increasing the odds that an implanted embryo will result in a successful pregnancy and delivery.
Tag: new technology
New Fertility Procedure To Help Hopeful Parents
The FDA has cleared new technology to help in vitro fertilization, or IVF, patients by using time-lapse technology that identifies embryos with the highest likelihood to survive. The Fertility Center of San Antonio is the only center of its kind in Texas and the southern part of the country using this new technology.
Whatever Happened to Stem Cells?
In 1998, the stunning promise of embryonic stem cells was discovered, and it was thought that we just might be on the threshold of an age of miracles. But no miracle is a match for politics.
One day, when you are ill, when your heart finally beats a thousand times too many, when your liver is sclerotic beyond use, when your pancreas stops producing insulin, when your kidneys no longer protect you from toxins, Dr. Anthony Atala wants to heal you. In his vision, you will visit a hospital in Omaha or San Francisco or Buffalo, and a specialist will diagnose you. Then you’ll have blood taken to determine your genetic makeup, and then those results will be transmitted to an office manager in charge of a sterile white room in North Carolina that Atala has built. In a few days a small vial of stem cells that match your immunological profile perfectly will be extracted from a cryogenic tank in that room and shipped to your surgeon, who will use them to build you a new organ from scratch. It will take four to eight weeks to build and grow and implant the organ, and then you will be whole once again. Read full article.
New biopsy procedure helping women avoid repeat miscarriages
HOUSTON (KTRK) — Miscarriages can be devastating for couples who are hoping for children, and it’s especially hard when a woman has repeated miscarriages. But now there’s a high-tech procedure to help avoid repeat miscarriages and save parents-to-be from heartbreak.
Victoria is five months old. But at one point, her mother wasn’t sure she would ever be able to have a baby. Charlotte had six miscarriages before she deliver Victoria.
“It was frustrating because you’re pregnant the you’re not, you’re pregnant you’re not,” Charlotte said.
Chromosome abnormalities are one of the top reasons for miscarriages. But at Houston IVF at Memorial Hermann Memorial City, women who have had multiple miscarriages are being offered a new technology that allows infertility specialists to find the embryo most likely to survive.
“We can actually find the embryos that are chromosomally normal and only transfer the normal ones back,” Houston IVF Dr. Timothy Hickman said.
They biopsy the outer cells, not the embryo itself. That makes the test less invasive and more accurate. Read full article.
IVF Clinic Deploys Ion Torrent Sequencing in Embryo Screening
A reproductive clinic in New Jersey has successfully used next-generation sequencing (NGS) to screen embryos conceived in otherwise routine in vitro fertilization (IVF) cases prior to implantation.
Embryo-like stem cells enter first human trial
It will be the first clinical study to put induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells into humans — and where more fitting than in Japan, where Shinya Yamanaka garnered a Nobel prize last December for showing how to take bodily cells and return them to an embryo-like pluripotent state.
Masayo Takahashi of the Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe just cleared the second and, observers say, most difficult hurdle in starting her iPS cell trial to treat age-related macular degeneration, a condition that affects the retina and can lead to blindness.
On Wednesday an institutional review board (IRB) at the Institute for Biomedical Research and Innovation(IBRI), which is going to sponsor the trial, gave conditional approval. The team needs now only to notify the IRB of the final results of some preclinical safety trials now underway (see story in Japanese). Read full article.
High Tech Incubator May Help Fertility Outcomes
CLEVELAND (WKYC) — Ed and Caroline Marks fell in love in college and eventually married. Like so many couples, they hoped for children. But after a year of trying without success, they did some investigating. A genetic test showed Ed had a chromosomal defect that makes conception difficult.
They went through two rounds of Invitro Fertilization without success. That’s when they became candidates for something new in the world of reproductive science at Cleveland Clinic.
It’s called an Embryoscope. It’s not a magic bullet, but it is a high-tech incubator and time-lapse camera that captures the beginning of life.
“Imagine you’re able to see every minute of the embryo’s development, even before it’s transferred to the uterus, before it implants on the uterine wall you’re able to see this embryo. It’s never been possible before,” says Dr. Nina Desai. Read full article.
New IVF Screening Can Turn Fertility Clock Back 10 Years
An IVF process that could give a woman in her early forties the same chance of becoming pregnant as a 32-year-old has been developed by scientists. They say the screening treatment could boost a 42-year-old’s odds of having a baby from 13 per cent to 60 per cent. It works by picking only the embryos most likely to create a healthy foetus, slashing the odds of miscarriage.
Crucially, it also involves the embryos being frozen for at least a month after IVF to allow the woman’s reproductive organs to return to normal. Scientists believe that the powerful fertility-boosting drugs given during IVF can harm the embryo if it is put into the womb too soon. Read full article.
US Scientists Aim to Make Sperm from Stem Cells
US researchers say they will redouble their efforts to create human sperm from stem cells following the success of a Japanese study involving mice. A Kyoto University team used mice stem cells to create eggs, which were fertilised to produce baby mice.
Dr Renee Pera, of Stanford University in California, aims to create human sperm to use for reproduction within two years, and eggs within five years. Read full article.
Nobel Prize For Medicine Awarded to Gurdon, Yamanaka for Stem Cell Discoveries
British scientist John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka of Japan shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine Monday for experiments separated by almost 50 years that provide deep insight into how animals develop and offer hope for a new era of personalized medicine.
“Their findings have revolutionized our understanding of how cells and organisms develop,” the Nobel committee said in the prize announcement. Read full article.