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Mini-Series: How Terra Fertility is elevating care and supporting outcomes with EmbryoScope and PGT-A Plus  

Embarking on an IVF (In Vitro Fertilization) journey can be emotionally complex and medically challenging. For patients, each decision along the way carries tremendous importance. One of the key elements that can support patients throughout this process is transparency, openness and information from clinics, clinicians, and laboratories. 

Mini-Series: How Terra Fertility is elevating care and supporting outcomes with EmbryoScope and PGT-A Plus  

Data from a recently published clinical study showed a significant increase in detection of euploid/diploid embryos in embryos with confirmed atypical PN using time-lapse technology with EmbryoScope and ploidy detection. 

Mini-Series: How Terra Fertility is elevating care and supporting outcomes with EmbryoScope and PGT-A Plus  

In modern IVF practice, Time-lapse incubation with EmbryoScope+ and PGT-A Plus genetic testing offer complementary strategies to identify more usable embryos that may help improve transfer success.

Advancements improve identification of useable embryos, and transparency on the process

Co-author: Alexandra Frost and Vitrolife

Chromosome aneuploidy (abnormal chromosome copy number) is a major cause of IVF failure, pregnancy loss and in rare cases, affected live births. Preimplantation genetic testing for aneuploidy (PGT-A), following culture to the blastocyst stage, trophectoderm biopsy, vitrification and testing by next generation sequencing (NGS) based methods for chromosome copy number analysis, is now widely used to identify embryos with normal chromosome copy number (euploid).

The beginning of a year is always a time for reflection on the achievements of the past year and an opportunity to look forward to what the coming year may bring. And for the newly formed Genomics Division here at Vitrolife, 2019 was certainly a busy time that has flown by. The team was well represented at all of the main reproductive genetics and IVF annual meetings including Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis International Society (PGDIS) meeting in Geneva and Controversies in Preconception, Preimplantation and Prenatal Genetics (CoGen) in Paris. At ESHRE in Vienna, Genomics was represented on the Vitrolife stand, which was a great opportunity to meet customers face-to-face, but equally important for us, to get to know all of our colleagues in other areas! There was a well-attended lunch time symposium at which I represented genomics and, in the evening, I had a lot of fun giving the after-dinner talk reminiscing on 30 plus years of my involvement in the field, since we published the first clinical pregnancies following preimplantation genetic diagnosis or PGD, as it was known then, for a range of X-linked inherited diseases, including Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Introducing Vitrolife genomics at PGDIS 2019

The International Society for Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGDIS) was formed in the early 1990s by a group of clinicians and scientists attending the inaugural meeting in Chicago, based in the historic Drake Hotel, and organised by the late Yury Verlinksy and colleagues, who was one of the pioneers of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, recently renamed preimplantation genetic testing (PGT). Last year, I became President of the Society and have been very involved in organising the 18th, now annual, meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. The meeting attracted about 350 attendees from 45 countries including nearly 40 from Russia.

This was an important first opportunity for the newly formed Vitrolife genomics team (who turned up in force!) to meet many of our customers for SNP genotyping and karyomapping for diagnosis of monogenic disease (PGT-M) and next generation sequencing (NGS) based chromosome copy number analysis for detection of aneuploidy (PGT-A). 

When working in an IVF lab there are different ways to assess embryos. You can score embryos using morphology and traditional grading, you can use preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) to get the genetic profiling of embryos prior to implantation, and finally you can analyse morphokinetic parameters of embryo development using time-lapse information. How do we bring together morphology, PGT and time-lapse to improve our embryo selection?  

I joined Vitrolife at the beginning of this year and was very flattered to have been asked to write not only the first blog of the year, but also the first blog from Vitrolife’s Genomics Business Unit – an application area close to my heart.

Living in Cambridge, UK where the structure of DNA was first discovered and where the technique of IVF was pioneered I feel very lucky to be part of this field where we are learning more and more about the role that genetics plays in infertility. Watson and Crick famously discussed their results in the Eagle pub, still popular with Cambridge students today and IVF pioneer Robert Edwards worked in the physiology lab just a few streets away.