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(sz) Scientists at The Jackson Laboratory are making major advancements in in-vitro fertilization techniques and hope to license the technology and make it commercially available, according to lab officials.
As a boost to this effort, Jackson Lab has received a Maine Technology Institute grant that will help fund research toward creating a standardized, automated system for in-vitro fertilization.
The grant for $12,500 is small by Jackson Lab standards — the lab received more than $50 million from the National Institutes of Health in 2007 — but the implications of the grant help illustrate a point that business leaders and government officials have been saying for years. Because of groundbreaking work being done at Maine firms such as Jackson Lab and Idexx Laboratories in Westbrook, among others, the state has the potential to become a global leader in the field of biotechnology, they have said.
Jackson Lab, known worldwide for its research in using mice to study the genetic causes of human disease, in 2006 spun off its first for-profit entity, Bar Harbor Biotechnology in Trenton, which manufactures genetic profile kits used in disease research. The research the MTI grant will help pay for could result in the lab spinning off another commercial enterprise that would be based in Maine, according to lab officials.
According to Shane Beckim, program associate at MTI, the grant will help fund six to nine months of fertilization research at the lab. more…

From: »Bangor Daily News«

(cz) IVF pregnancy rates could double and the incidence of serious complications, such as miscarriage and pre-eclampsia, could be halved thanks to a new procedure developed at the University of Adelaide.
Researchers have created a formula which will help embryos better survive their five days out of the womb, and help the foetus and placenta develop more normally.
The head of the research teams, Claire Roberts said today the development, which has been successful in mice, was “absolutely fantastic” and could change the face of fertility treatments.
“This is just fabulous,” she said. “The molecules we are using in this culture are universal across all mammals so I feel very confident this will translate well to humans.”
Associate Professor Roberts has been awarded a $294,750 Federal Government grant to demonstrate that the treatment is safe and improves pregnancy outcomes and the postnatal health of babies.
Human trials are expected to begin with two years and if successful, could eventually help the 15 per cent of couples in first world countries who are either infertile or suffer from recurrent miscarriages, the university said. more…

From: »Sydney Morning Herald«

(sz) A milder form of fertility treatment that is safer for women also results in higher quality embryos that are more likely to develop successfully inside the mother, according to researchers who compared the method with conventional methods. They say the technique, which is cheaper because it uses lower doses of hormone-mimicking drugs, should be used more widely by fertility clinics.
In conventional IVF doctors begin by massively stimulating the woman’s ovaries to produce 10 or more eggs. When these are mixed with sperm this gives the doctors plenty of choice about which embryos to implant back into the womb. But the new study suggests that many of these embryos will be genetically defective and so will not develop. Even under natural conditions around 30% of early embryos do not progress to the foetus stage because of genetic abnormalities.
“It has always been thought that the more eggs the better. We like to have a nice assortment of embryos to choose from,” said Dr Esther Baart, an embryologist at the University Medical Centre in Utrecht who carried out the study. But her research suggests that the number of normal eggs is about the same as those delivered by the gentle technique even though the total drops from around 12 to around eight. more…

From: »The Guardian«

(sz) A retrospective analysis conducted at a large infertility center evaluated pregnancy outcomes for 225 donor egg recipients
A retrospective analysis of anonymous oocyte (egg) donation cycles, comparing the pregnancy outcomes between vaginally-administered progesterone versus intramuscular (IM) progesterone injections, demonstrates that vaginally-administered progesterone and IM progesterone achieve equal pregnancy outcomes, according to data presented by Brian Berger, MD, Boston IVF, at the Pacific Coast Reproductive Society annual meeting in Rancho Mirage, CA. The retrospective study was supported by a grant from Columbia Laboratories, Inc. (NASDAQ:CBRX).
“We found no significant differences in pregnancy outcomes between patients treated with vaginal progesterone versus progesterone administered intramuscularly,” said Dr. Berger. “Further, vaginal progesterone has the added advantage of avoiding painful intramuscular injections.”
In 225 egg donor cycles, 105 patients received vaginally-administered progesterone (CRINONE® 8% (a bioadhesive progesterone gel)) and 120 received IM progesterone. The implantation rate was 43.8% for vaginal progesterone versus 37.1% for IM progesterone (p=0.175). Recipients treated with vaginal progesterone achieved a 58.1% pregnancy rate and a 51.4% delivery rate, versus a 53.3% pregnancy rate (p=0.503) and a 48.3% delivery rate (p=0.689) for patients receiving IM progesterone. The pregnancy loss rate was 10.5% for patients using vaginal progesterone and 10.8% for IM progesterone users (p=1.00).
“This study clearly demonstrates that vaginal progesterone gel achieves the same pregnancy outcomes as progesterone administered via an intramuscular injection. This is important confirmation that CRINONE® 8% offers patients an efficacious and more convenient option for providing progesterone support in infertility treatment,” Berger added.
Boston IVF is one of America’s most successful fertility centers, providing patients with unparalleled medical care and the best experience with the expertise of premier doctors and professional staff, who are affiliated with Harvard Medical School. It is world renowned for its highly successful and innovative infertility treatments, highest quality service, state-of-the-art methods, ongoing scientific research, and on-site complementary healthcare at its Domar Center. more…

From: »Columbia Laboratories / BusinessWire« (press release)

(cz) Pantec Biosolutions reports promising preclinical in vitro data in support of the company’s novel Please intraepidermal drug delivery platform.
Pantec Biosolutions has achieved further important milestones in the replacement of injection-based therapies with painless needle-free transdermal systems In vitro permeation proof-of-principle studies with a series of small and large molecular weight therapeutics, demonstrate that Please (painless laser epidermal system) significantly increases drug transport of poorly and non-permeating therapeutic agents.
Proof-of-principle, according to Yogeshvar Kalia, (school of pharmaceutical sciences, University of Geneva and scientific advisor to Pantec Biosolutions), “means cumulative drug permeation that is at least equivalent to delivery from the existing dosage form, e.g, by subcutaneous injection”.
The company has completed in vitro permeation studies with several key hormones in its primary focus area of in vitro fertilisation (IVF).
The results formed the basis of collaboration agreements with a pharmaceuticals company and a patch development and manufacturing company.
Development of transdermal patch systems, optimised for use with the Please technology, is underway with clinical results expected in 2009. more…

From: »laboratorytalk«

(cz) Molecular Biometrics Uses NIR Spectroscopy to Detect Embryo Viability by Creating Metabolic Profiles
While viewing an exhibit of Monet’s impressionistic paintings, Jim Posillico, Ph.D., president and CEO at Molecular Biometrics in Chester, NJ, noted the similarity of the art with his company’s metabolomics platform.
Like the discrete brush strokes, textures, and colors that interact to form an impressionistic image, “metabolomics looks at the bigger picture from its constituent parts,” Dr. Posillico explains. The individual pieces of information in metabolomics are molecular biomarkers in biological samples, which give an accurate diagnostic profile of a biological condition or state of cellular activity.
The technology platform at Molecular Biometrics combines metabolomics with near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy. The company’s lead product, ViaTest-E™, tests the viability of embryos at in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics to increase the chance for a successful pregnancy. The test uses NIR spectroscopy to detect biomarkers of oxidative metabolism that strongly correlate with embryo viability.
The groundwork for the company’s biospectroscopy-based metabolomics platform was done in the laboratory of chemist David Burns, Ph.D., at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. Dr. Burns and Dr. Posillico, an endocrinologist, cofounded Molecular Biometrics in 2005 and licensed five broad patents from McGill University, which cover applications of metabolomics and different forms of spectroscopy to different medical conditions including fetal development and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. more…

From: »Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News«

(sz) Research at Fertility Center of Las Vegas Finds Innovative Breakthrough for Increasing IVF Pregnancy Rates – Getting the Embryo “in sync” With the Endometrium
The January 2008 issue of the nations preeminent journal of reproductive medicine, Fertility & Sterility, featured a research article by Dr. Bruce Shapiro and Dr. Said Daneshmand of the Fertility Center of Las Vegas. That article, titled “Contrasting patterns in in vitro fertilization pregnancy rates among fresh autologous, fresh oocyte donor, and cryopreserved cycles using day 5 or day 6 blastocysts may reflect differences in embryo-endometrium synchrony”, points out how pregnancy rates in IVF cycles can be strongly influenced by endometrial receptivity.
Specifically, the research finds that many slowly developing embryos fail to implant because they tend to miss the endometrium’s receptive phase because the endometrium is advanced by ovarian stimulation. Heretofore, it was commonly assumed that slow embryos were less viable. Now it seems they are only out of synchrony with the endometrium.
The salient point of this research was to show that the reduced pregnancy rate with slow embryos, specifically day 6 blastocysts, only appeared in fresh non-donor cycles. The effect disappeared in cycles using thawed embryos and in cycles of egg donation. Interestingly, it only appeared in cycles where the woman receiving the transferred embryos had just undergone ovarian stimulation. more…

From: »NewsReleaseWire« (press release)

(cz) Embryo research has pitted scientists against bishops, caused a cabinet split and divided the country. Religion, politics, medicine and ethics all collide in a debate that boils down to the question above
Is a bunch of cells just that: a bunch of cells, as scientists would have it, or is it, as the Catholic Church insists, a human being with a soul?
It is the dispute that lies at the heart of the controversy over the Embryo Bill and it is as fundamental a difference of opinion as it is possible to imagine.
Gordon Brown performed a political climbdown yesterday and promised Labour MPs a free vote on the most emotive measures in the Bill, in effect throwing open the debate to the entire country. It is a piece of legislation that challenges our deepest notion of what it is to be human and what it is right to sanction in the interests of scientific progress.
MPs, in deciding how to cast their votes, will be taking soundings in their constituencies at the same time as consulting their consciences. In doing so, they are certain to be harangued with views from both sides in the acrimonious debate. The mammoth Bill is designed to update the 1990 regulatory framework for fertility treatment and embryo research in line with scientific advances and changes in public attitudes during the past 18 years. more…

From: »The Independent / Science«

(sz) Something that you’ve probably known intuitively for years is finally official: mothers of daughters are different to mothers of sons, and we produce the sex of children we’re most suited to bring up.
Traditional perception is that the sex of your baby is pure toss-of-the-coin chance, but ten years ago, Dr Valerie Grant, a reproductive scientist at the University of Auckland, came up with the theory that dominant women have high levels of testosterone (often considered the male sex hormone) and are much more likely to give birth to boys.
A small group of researchers, from anthropologists to evolutionary biologists, have known for years that something other than chance affects the human sex ratio which, rather than remaining at a constant 50:50 male to female, is prone to fluctuations; during both World Wars, for example, there was an increase in the number of male births. Grant, who has a PhD in psychology, was the first to suggest that it was down to the character of the mother. “Scientists already knew that mothers behave differently towards their babies according to their sex [mothers of boys are more initiating, mothers of girls more responsive], but the conclusion was that this was because of the strength of sex stereotyping. I’d say there was evidence that the mothers were behaving in ways that were natural to them.” more…

From: »The Times«

(sz) In women over 40 years old, pregnancy loss in a first in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycle is not predictive of an improved delivery rate in subsequent cycles, as is the case in women under 40, according to a report in the February issue of Fertility and Sterility.
“Cumulative live birth rates for women 40 years or older with and without prior pregnancy losses are the same,” Dr. Rita Sneeringer told Reuters Health.
Dr. Sneeringer from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts and associates explain that for women younger than 40 undergoing IVF, pregnancy in a prior cycle - even a pregnancy loss - is associated with improved odds of pregnancy in subsequent cycles.
To investigate the situation in older women, the researchers analyzed data on 584 women who had an initial IVF cycle over the age of 40. Fifty-seven of these women delivered and were excluded from the analysis, while 49 had a pregnancy loss and 478 did not conceive.
There was no significant difference in the percent of women who achieved a subsequent liveborn delivery in the prior pregnancy loss group (18.0 per cent) and the negative beta-hCG group (21.9 per cent), the team found. more…

From: »Medicexchange«