Lyvanta could improve IVF outcomes for older women by protecting eggs. Photo / Getty Images
Older mothers could have the same chances of conceiving during fertility treatment as young women thanks to a new drug that stops eggs from ageing.
The treatment prevents genetic material inside older eggs from breaking down, which is the leading cause of fertilisation failure in women over 35.
Currently, women under 35 have a one-in-three chance of an IVF cycle resulting in pregnancy, but this chance drops to less than 5% for women over 40.
But the drug under development, called Lyvanta, helps halt age-related damage to eggs – meaning the eggs of women in their late 30s, 40s and even into their 50s could be as good as those of women in their 20s.
In a world first, the treatment will be tested in human eggs in UK fertility clinics this year after successful trials in mice. Researchers hope to start clinical trials of the treatment in patient IVF cycles as early as 2027.
Dr Jordan Abdi, co-founder of U-Ploid Biotechnologies, the company behind the discovery, said: “There’s still a lot of work to be done, but the potential is very exciting. We hope it will be transformative.”
Women are born with a lifetime’s supply of egg cells, housed in their ovaries as “immature” eggs and only maturing – a process where it gets ready for fertilisation by a sperm cell – during an ovulation cycle.
But as women age, their egg cells age too, increasing the likelihood that the maturing process will go wrong.
When it does, egg cells are left with incomplete or damaged genetic material which means they may not fertilise or may lead to pregnancies which result in miscarriage.
If scientists can prevent this damage during the maturing process, women with older eggs would be as likely to conceive as young women.
Abdi said: “We have understood [the science behind] this problem for a decade, but we have never before been able to prevent it. As long as women still have eggs, the eggs can be treated. This could extend a woman’s reproductive window right up to the menopause.
“At the moment, generally, for women past the age of 42 who are struggling to conceive the only real option is donor eggs. There are such limited options and it can be heart-breaking … [But this new treatment] could change how we offer reproductive services to patients.”
Normally in an IVF cycle, a woman takes hormonal medicine to stimulate her eggs to mature inside her body, which are then collected for fertilisation in a lab. But in older women, many of these eggs will be poor quality because of breakdown of genetic material during the maturing process, and only a few may fertilise.
Under the new treatment, immature eggs would be collected from a woman’s ovaries and then injected with Lyvanta, using the same techniques fertility clinics currently use to inject sperm for fertilisation.
The drug acts like a “glue” to hold together the genetic material inside the egg while it is maturing. Then the immature eggs will be triggered to mature in a lab, before being used in an IVF cycle as normal.
If the treatment is rolled out into clinics, it would also mean women would avoid the physical and psychological strain of having to inject themselves with hormonal drugs to stimulate egg maturation during IVF cycles.
Results of trials in mice, which were presented at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine conference in October, showed the drug reduced genetic damage in older eggs by 84%.
Abdi stressed that the treatment was still at an early stage of testing on human eggs and did not yet have approval to be used in IVF cycles, although he hopes these trials will start as early as next year.
His team has partnered with the UK’s largest fertility clinic group, Care Fertility, and other private clinics in the UK and US for the upcoming studies, where patients will donate spare eggs for testing.
The studies will initially examine how well the drug works in protecting the maturing process, before monitoring whether treated eggs effectively fertilise and then develop into embryos. Only after this, will the treatment get approval for use in real-life IVF cycles.
“We are cautiously optimistic,” he added. “We very excited to see how the initial [human] studies go.”
Sarah Norcross, director of the fertility research charity Progress Educational Trust, warned prospective parents it was too early to know whether the treatment would be a success.
She said: “While [we are] always pleased to see research being carried out to try to optimise people’s chances of successful IVF treatment, this particular research is in its very early stages and much more needs to be done before it is offered to patients.”
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