Future Fertility and GeneraLife embark on scientific collaboration to assess donor egg quality using AI

The global egg donation market is expected to grow on average by almost eight per cent per year through 2028.

Demand for donor eggs continues to rise due to the increasing number of couples who are unable to conceive naturally and improved awareness around the availability of egg donation as a treatment option.

The fertility industry, in turn, has grown to help accommodate this demand through the expansion of clinic networks and the vertical integration of clinics with egg banks.

While donor eggs present a promising option for hopeful parents who cannot produce eggs or have low egg quality, undergoing IVF using donor eggs presents significant financial, emotional, and physical hurdles.

Today, couples receiving donor eggs have no measure of the quality of the eggs they are receiving because there is currently no objective standard of care to determine egg quality.

By comparison, sperm donation has been a long-standing option in fertility treatment, and every sample of donated sperm is thoroughly tested to categorise its quality – motility, concentration, and morphology – as a selection parameter.

The main qualifier for egg donation is that most egg donation programmes require donors to be under 30 years of age. This is because today’s standard of care uses generalised age-based egg quality predictions, which assume that someone under 30 still has high-quality eggs.

This assumption however doesn’t account for the variability that exists between patients in the same age group or even the differences in egg quality observed in the same person within and across cycles.

Reliance on generalised information makes it difficult for donor egg recipients to manage their expectations of success and feel reassured about their substantial investment in pursuing this option to conceive.

To address this challenge, Future Fertility and GeneraLife will be collaborating on a multi-centre research study in Spain that will leverage Future Fertility’s AI-powered oocyte assessment tools to measure the quality of donor eggs and determine feasibility for this clinical use case.

“We are thrilled to be partnering with the GeneraLife group to conduct this scientific study. The clinical leadership at GeneraLife, and at these clinics, are key opinion leaders in the field, and we believe partnerships like this are critical to the success and adoption of AI in the fertility field,” says Christy Prada, CEO of Future Fertility.

Future Fertility currently has validated AI products in-market for egg freezing and IVF, and this new use case would unlock new resources for patients undergoing egg donation.

Results of this study can help to optimise donor egg screening, gain relevant information about donor egg quality and provide greater transparency to egg donation treatments in the future.

GeneraLife, a leading European network of over 50 fertility clinics has selected three Spanish clinics to spearhead the study: Ginefiv Barcelona, Ginefiv Madrid, and Ginemed Sevilla.

GeneraLife and its renowned team of fertility professionals are deeply rooted in scientific research to uncover best practices and advancements in Assisted Reproduction Technology.

“It is only through collaborating with partners like this that tools are built in a safe, objective, and clinically useful way, creating the opportunity to significantly impact care for patients,” commented Dr Dan Nayot, REI and co-founder of Future Fertility.

Future Fertility is the first company to create a system that non-invasively assesses individual eggs turning qualitative subjective information into quantitative, measurable and objective data. By processing images at the pixel-level, Future Fertility’s technology can identify patterns related to treatment outcomes that are undetectable by the human eye.

“The implementation of Artificial Intelligence to objectify and standardise gamete and embryo assessment is currently a hot topic in IVF. We, as a company, are at the forefront to validate the existing tools and to outline their true clinical value,” commented Danilo Cimadomo, science and research manager of GeneraLife IVF.

“A scientific partnership with the companies that are investing much effort in advancing this field, like Future Fertility, is critical to optimise the management of oocyte donation programmes,” concluded Laura Rienzi, scientific director of GeneraLife and adjunct professor at the University of Urbino.