A hormone sensor being developed in Australia could help reduce fertility treatment costs and patient pain during IVF.

When preparing for egg collection or an embryo transfer, IVF patients rely on clinicians to closely monitor hormone levels to ensure the procedure is timed precisely when progesterone, oestradiol and luteinising hormone levels are optimal, giving the patient the best chance at conception.

Currently, blood tests are the primary method of measuring progesterone levels, requiring patients to undergo multiple blood draws at a laboratory during certain stages of their menstrual cycle.

However, this approach has several limitations.

For example, if testing falls on a weekend, when most labs are closed, IVF providers are forced to choose a less optimal testing time, potentially affecting treatment precision.

University of Melbourne alumni Edgar Charry and Muhammad Umer, whose partners have lived experience of infertility, created a reproductive health solution by developing a biosensor that can detect progesterone and oestradiol levels using fluid found in the skin, rather than in the blood.

Their startup company Symex Labs has partnered with the University of Melbourne to translate their research into a commercial product.

“Previous research shows nearly all hormones that exist in blood, are also present in interstitial fluid,” said Symex Labs co-founder Charry.

“Interstitial fluid is clear fluid just under the skin that sits between cells, delivering nutrients and carrying away waste.”

“Our biosensor will eventually be worn as a patch and will work by penetrating the skin using small microneedles to attract progesterone molecules in the patient’s interstitial fluid.

“These molecules will bind to the surface of the probe, generating electrical activity. The technology then translates the electrical activity to progesterone levels, ultimately informing the IVF clinical team if the patient is ready for embryo transfer.

“This data will be sent directly to the clinic’s monitoring system, allowing IVF nurses to review the results and advise the patient.”

Monash IVF research director associate professor Mark Green said that, for Monash IVF, the investment in Symex Labs aligns with the company’s focus on innovation and improving the patient journey.

“This technology will save patients time and money as they can conveniently wear the patch in the comfort of their own home, resulting in fewer visits to the clinic and fewer painful injections,” associate professor Green said.

“The biosensor would also be a gamechanger for women living in regional areas, who often have to travel long distances for blood draws.”

As the exact amount of progesterone in interstitial fluid is not well understood, Symex Labs is conducting a world-first clinical study at Monash IVF to establish baseline levels by benchmarking them against concentrations measured in blood samples.

Researchers say their hormone tracking technology also has wider clinical applications beyond the IVF sector.

“Our wearable hormone biosensor has strong potential well beyond fertility care, particularly in PCOS management, perimenopause and menopause symptom management, where continuous hormone insight can replace today’s indirect, symptom-based tracking,” said Symex Labs co-founder Muhammad Umer.

“By integrating directly with consumer health apps, the technology can enable personalised, data-driven management of chronic hormonal conditions and life-stage transitions that currently lack real-time biomarkers.

“For example, if a woman’s oestrogen is going up and down constantly, that’s often a sign that she is getting into that stage, so having access to this health information could help women implement lifestyle changes earlier.”

The research has received A$2.5m in funding from the federal government, the University of Melbourne’s Genesis fund, Monash IVF, RMIT and Breakthrough Victoria.

The first in-human pilot study is expected to get underway within the next 12 months, with commercialisation plans slated for early 2028.

AI could help routine mammograms spot heart disease risk in women, as well as breast cancer, researchers have found.

A team from Emory University analysed regular screening scans from more than 123,000 women who had no prior history of cardiovascular disease.

Using an AI programme to quantify calcification and hardening in the arteries, they found women with severe cases had two to three times the risk of developing potentially fatal heart attacks, stroke and heart failure.

“This was true even in younger women under 50, a group often considered low-risk, and held up after accounting for other risk factors like diabetes and smoking,” said Hari Trivedi, Emory associate professor and co-director of the university’s Health Innovation and Translational Informatics lab, who described the research as the largest study of its kind.

“We wanted to test whether AI could use this to identify women at risk of cardiovascular disease at no extra cost or inconvenience.

“”For women, this means a mammogram you’re already having could also provide important information about your heart health, prompting a conversation with your doctor about preventive steps such as cholesterol testing or medication.”

The researchers’ work was published today in the European Heart Journal, from the European Society of Cardiology, which noted that women are largely underdiagnosed and undertreated for cardiovascular disease.

They wrote that the high resolution of routine mammograms could allow for essentially automatic, direct visualisation of the arterial beds within the breasts of nearly all adult women, with calcifications easy to detect and correlated with deposits found in other parts of the body.

The researchers said that, compared with imaging of the heart’s coronary arteries, where blockages narrow and impede the flow of oxygenated blood to the heart muscle, calcifications in breast tissue affect a separate layer of the vessel, resulting in increased artery stiffness, a measure typically linked to long-term hypertension.

They described the finding as an independent predictor of cardiovascular disease and a potentially useful addition to traditional cardiovascular risk factors.

In an accompanying editorial, Lori Daniels, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, said that while fewer than 40 per cent of women may know their cholesterol levels, many more are up to date with their breast cancer screening.

“Two-thirds of women aged 50-69 in the European Union reported a mammogram within the prior 2 years, and in the USA, nearly 70 per cent of women aged 45 years and older were up to date with mammography according to American Cancer Society screening guidelines,” Daniels wrote.

“Breast arterial calcification has the potential to reframe this mismatch, leveraging a widely adopted cancer-screening platform to identify cardiovascular risk in women who may not otherwise engage with prevention.”