Aussie biotech reveals superiority of its technology in IVF procedures

Biotech News: An Australian reproductive biotechnology company announced superiority in the first publications for its device that is used in human IVF procedures.

Male infertility is a big factor in failure of IVF treatments, with sperm quality rather than quantity the key issue.

Memphasys’ two publications on the Felix System showed it outperformed the conventional sperm preparation method – density gradient centrifugation (DGC) method, the most globally common sperm preparation method for IVF procedures.

Results of the first study highlighted spermatozoa preparation with Felix System “significantly improved spermatozoa fractions with higher progressive motility, lower sperm DNA fragmentation, and lower sperm DNA oxidation compared with raw semen and DGC-prepared spermatozoa”.

The publication noted that the study data supported spermatozoa preparation by the Felix system “as it allows selection of spermatozoa with the highest progressive motility as well as the lowest nuclear/DNA damage.”

The article concluded that “these improved sperm parameters, along with the fact that the Felix separation process is very fast and highly standardised, should be of great interest to the assisted reproduction technologies industry.”

In addition, five international ART Centres in Australia, India, Sweden, the USA, and China have collaborated in order to compare the quality of the sperm populations isolated by Felix and DGC.

Four of the five centres reported a significant improvement in DNA integrity relative to DGC noting that the the Felix system “is a positive technical development capable of isolating suspensions of highly motile spermatozoa in a fraction of the time taken by conventional procedures such as DGC.”

The Felix system isolates sperm in a standardised 6-minute preparation time whereas clinical DGC protocols vary between sites but generally took around 40 minutes to complete.

The company said that the peer reviewed papers underpin the utility of the device, enhance commercialisation discussions and will add to future regulatory filing material.

Memphasys is engaged with another clinical trial with Monash IVF which was pushed back into from last year into this year. This is due to lower than-expected participation rates across clinical trial sites post-COVID and patients failing to meet the trial’s stringent entry criteria.

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