Fertility clinic in Canada to allow IVF patients to ‘incubate’ embryos inside their bodies

04.03.2015

Conventional IVF involves mixing unfertilized eggs and tens of thousands of sperm in a Petri dish and then placing them in a mechanical ventilator for up to five days.

The first in Canada, a Toronto fertility clinic to offer women undergoing in-vitro fertilization the chance to “incubate” the embryos they hope will one day become a baby inside their bodies, instead of a lab dish.

With the new technology, eggs and sperm are placed in a plastic egg-shaped capsule that is inserted into the woman’s vagina. After three to five days, the device is removed, the capsule opened and the healthiest-looking embryos transferred to her uterus.

At the Toronto Centre for Advanced Reproductive Technologies (TCART) conducted a small study involving 10 women that were treated using a new method. Four of them became pregnant after using the “natural incubator,” known as INVOcell.

The centre says the device may appeal to women “who desire close connection to her own embryos” for personal or religious beliefs and may help alleviate “separation anxiety” by allowing them to carry their early embryos in their bodies for five days.

Not yet published the Toronto study, involved 10 young, healthy women. They were given fertility drugs to stimulate their ovaries to produce multiple eggs. Eggs from the same patient were divided into two groups: half went into the routine IVF incubator, the other half into the INVOcell device.

The INVOcell system would add about $500 to the expense of IVF, which typically costs about $12,000 a cycle.

Dr. Roger Pierson, a University of Saskatchewan-based fertility scientist, said there are no known risks with the procedure, which may appeal to women who have a religious conviction conception should occur as naturally as possible.

Based on: nationalpost.com