Written by Steve Masler, CEO of Fertility SOURCE Companies

Serono has launched a noteworthy project that is no doubt connected to the rapidly growing interest in egg freezing for all manners of conditions, not the least of which is freezing of donor eggs for later provision to recipients. ASRM 2008 was replete with scientific presentations and posters on various studies of the application of egg freezing. Judging from anecdotal comments heard at the conference, egg freezing will be a larger part of the repetoire of fertility practices in 2009 than it has ever been before. Serono’s intended efforts at evaluation of the two techniques commonly used in egg freezing, “slow-cooling” and “vitrification” can be valuable but may be too little (400 women) and protracted over too long a period (three year recruitment period plus two year additional tracking period) to have large effects on its own. But, as a starter to encourage others to enter the fray, it is very timely.

Click on the link below to access the article mentioned above:
EMD Serono launches patient registry for egg freezing

Written by Steve Masler, CEO of Fertility SOURCE Companies

ASRM 2008 in San Francisco was like a coming out party for oocyte cryopreservation (egg freezing). It seems that many have become convinced via studies that egg freezing for various applications is now viable and that it not only is a more efficient method for egg donation (than fresh egg donation) but also a less costly one to the patient. Numerous scientific presentations and posters dealt with comparisons of vitrification and slow freezing as well as the application of egg freezing in general.

One poster was regarding a frozen egg bank of 61 donors that had been established by a single fertility practice. The same group will be publishing an article in Fertility & Sterility that will the results of a study comparing the use of frozen eggs from donors who had previously donated fresh eggs. The conclusion presented is “The present study demonstrates that oocyte cryopreservation can be considered as a tool to provide highly successful outcomes in an egg donor program. Our results validate the use of oocyte cryo-banking for egg donation purposes. In addition to the high success rates, oocyte cryo-banking can help to eliminate some of the obstacles associated with the current “fresh embryo” transfer policy. Oocyte cryo-banking will also dramatically reduce frozen embryo storage and mitigate related moral/ethical concerns, and may help with donor-recipient synchronization and possibly reduce cost.”

Anecdotally, many fertility practitioners returned from ASRM believing that the time for large scale movement toward egg freezing for donor situations as well as for other applications has arrived.

Click on the link below to access the abstract for Fertility & Sterility article mentioned above:
Clinical evaluation of the efficiency of an oocyte donation program using egg cryo-banking

Written by Steve Masler, CEO of Fertility SOURCE Companies

As a follow up to our last blog posting, our speakers identified key points from each of their presentations delivered at our New York symposium, Directions and Trends in Egg Freezing. As mentioned previously, the speaker’s subjects were in regard to Legal, Ethical and Scientific/Medical issues in what is becoming a rapidly progressing technology aimed at making the egg donation process more efficient from a coordination and cost standpoint. Following are the speakers’ key points:

Brent Barrett, PhD, HCLD, Scientific and Laboratory Director for Boston IVF, names: evolving technology, particularly in regard to vitrification (fast freeze); potential for FDA to become involved in oversight of egg freezing programs; growing identification of benefits to recipients from pursuing egg freezing processes.

Susan Crockin, JD, Crockin Law and Policy Group, names: issues created by the separation of the egg donation act from the receipt of eggs by the recipient patient; ultimate resolution of unique legal issues including control over frozen eggs, structure of payments, and recording and storing of information.

Fertility Source Companies intends to create a List-Serv for the purpose of further discussion about the above issues. Please note that if you are interested in subscribing to the List-Serv, please email fscmoderator@yahoo.com.

Written by Steve Masler, CEO of Fertility SOURCE Companies

The Los Angeles Times of Monday, October 6 includes several articles about the dilemma facing the fertility world regarding its accumulation of about (at present) 500,000 frozen embryos. Though the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) permits fertility practices to discard abandoned embryos after five years of storage, no fertility practice has seen fit to implement such an unapproved (by the relevant IVF patient) destruction of embryos.

The articles go on to discuss adoption and research alternatives for frozen embryos. The articles indicate that though there is wide spread support for donation of embryos to research on the part of fertility patients, practical matters make such research donation difficult to achieve in most cases, and in many states.

The articles do not discuss another alternative approach to the frozen embryo dilemma. That is the fertilization of frozen eggs in lieu of using fresh eggs for IVF procedures. When eggs are frozen after being retrieved in an IVF procedure, only a select number need be fertilized with the rest retained in a frozen egg bank. Few, if any, people question that a frozen egg is in any way a potential person. Rather it is viewed as a gamete that is not complete toward forming a human. Ultimate destruction of excess frozen eggs, if any, is apt to be much more accepted than destruction of frozen embryos.

The technology of egg freezing has been dramatically improving in recent years as to its chances for successful pregnancies and births. As the technology improves even more, the emotional benefits of avoiding an excess of frozen embryos is apt to cause the procedure to become much more prevalent.

Click on the link below to see the recap of this article:
Infertility patients caught in the legal, moral and scientific embryo debate

Written by Steve Masler, CEO of Fertility SOURCE Companies

Fertility Source Companies sponsored and hosted a symposium in New York City on Directions and Trends in Egg Freezing. The program was arranged to present the legal, ethical and scientific/medical issues involved in what is becoming a rapidly progressing technology aimed at making the egg donation process more efficient from a coordination and cost standpoint.

Presenters were psychotherapist, Patricia Mendel, LCSW speaking on ethical issues; Susan L. Crockin, JD, speaking on legal issues; and Brent Barrett, Ph.D., H.C.L.D. speaking on scientific/medical issues.

The audience, largely comprised of physicians and their clinical staff from various fertility practices, was highly interactive with the speakers, engaging them in dialogue about cases they experienced in their own practices as well as directions for egg freezing in the fertility community at large.

Among the issues that were covered at the symposium were the following:

Legal Issues:
· Who owns the frozen donor eggs?
· Are the eggs bought and sold?
· What rights might the donor have over use of her eggs?
· Likelihood of prompting FDA quarantine (a la sperm banks)

Medical Issues:
· Vitrification (fast freeze) or slow freeze
· How many eggs in a batch?
· Success rates

Ethical Issues:
· Limits on donor compensation
· Reduction of frozen embryos (a plus)
· Experimental procedure
· Disposition of residual eggs (beyond batches)

Financial Issues:
· Donor compensation
· Pricing

Fertility SOURCE Companies would very much appreciate your thoughts and comments on any of the issues mentioned above. Hopefully, this will bring new light to many in the Third Party Reproduction field.

Written by Steve Masler, CEO of Fertility SOURCE Companies

In their well written and thoughtful article, Drs. de Melo-Martin and Cholst point out many of the ethical dilemmas facing the fertility profession regarding performance of oocyte cryopreservation procedures in cases of cancer patients, fertility extension and egg donation.

Though this author agrees with the various ethical dilemmas (and resolutions proposed) identified in the article, I suggest consideration be given to one of presented ethical issues in an additional way.

In an attempt to define the categories of fertility patients who could ethically be included in a research protocol involving cryopreservation of oocytes, the authors name “Possibly women to whom it would be ethically appropriate to offer the option to participate in oocytye cryopreservation protocols [if they are] opposed to embryo cryopreservation.”

Considering the above, I would suggest that the fertility profession itself has implicitly defined continuing additions to the already nationally large stock of cryopreserved embryos, many of which will never be implanted, as an ethical issue in its own right. Therefore, regardless of the views of individual patients, which many if not most of the time will not be explicitly clear on the point, the ethical dilemma of continued addition to the accumulation of frozen embryos should be sufficient to motivate the fertility profession to a more expansive view of eligible participants for oocyte cryopreservation protocols.

Click on the link below to access the abstract:
Researching Human Oocyte Cryopreservation Ethical Issues

The following question was recently posed to us from Heather on Thursday, August 21, 2008:

Does anyone out there know anything about DNA transfer into a donor egg. i.e. I have read about oocyte use as a vehicle to carry DNA by withdrawing the donor’s DNA and injecting the receiver’s DNA. Any thoughts? Has anyone heard a doctor who does the relatively new procedure of DNA transfer through the use of a donor’s egg? For example, withdrawing the donor’s DNA and injecting the receiver’s DNA so that the baby has the same DNA as it’s parents-to-be.

We now have an answer to her question from a very prominent scientific researcher in the field of IVF, Dr. Jacques Cohen, Director of Reprogenetics and Tyho Galileo Research Laboratories.

The question is semantically describing a procedure that appears a substitute of cloning. The US government has curtailed such research and experimental work in a letter to all IVF clinics in 2001 which was publicized widely and accepted by the clinical community http://www.fda.gov/CBER/genetherapy/clone.htm. There is currently no evidence that the approach would be a good or safe alternative to standard IVF with gamete donation. Based on numerous publications from the animal science literature the offspring from such experiments may have a greater likelihood of anomalies compared to standard reproductive technology. Based on our understanding of the processes involved and the outcomes of animal experimentation, it is currently not recommended to pursue this avenue.

I hope this helps.