Exploitation of unique growth factors to develop new products for infertility treatment

Funding Activity

Website
http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/453685

Funding Status
Closed

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Funded Activity Summary

Infertility comes at an enormous social and financial cost to Australian society; infertility is a major psychological burden on young couples and the technologies used to treat infertility, such as in vitro fertilisation (IVF), require expensive drugs to stimulate the ovary. The cost of these drugs to Medicare is expected to exceed $100 million p.a. over the next decade. A reproductive technology, which has always shown great potential to elevate some of this burden, is oocyte (egg) in vitro maturation (IVM), which drastically reduces the use-cost of drugs and the stress to patients. However, oocyte IVM has been slow to live up to its potential and the technology is still not in widespread clinical practice, mainly due to disappointing success rates in women. We have been studying oocyte IVM in animals for many years, and have recently made a significant technological breakthrough, improving success rates by ~50%. In this field, a 50% increase in efficiency is substantial and has significant clinical and commercial application. Currently, we are the only group worldwide with this technology. Over the course of this 2-year project we will conduct follow-up experiments to refine this discovery and investigate the feasibility of using this approach to treat human infertility. We are already in negotiations with two medical device manufacturers to licence this technology. We expect that this project will lead to a series of products and technologies that will enter a clinical trial for the treatment of infertility within 2-3 years.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2007

End Date: 01-01-2007

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Development Grants

Funding Amount: $132,525.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Reproduction

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

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Other Keywords

assisted reproductive medicine | assisted reproductive technology | embryo development | female infertility | growth factor | in vitro fertilisation | in vitro maturation of oocytes | oocyte maturation | reproductive biology

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