McGill discovery could improve IVF success rate

Clinical approval is not imminent, but a discovery by a team of researchers at McGill University could eventually allow women undergoing in vitro fertilization to avoid painful hormone injections and increase the procedure’s success rate.

This is the promising avenue of the light-activated microneedle patch. No more daily injections before egg retrieval for women hoping to get pregnant through in vitro fertilization. This step in the process is often stressful and painful for women.

In addition, in vitro fertilization is often unsuccessful. Success rates hover around 30 per cent, mainly because the injections must be given at specific times each day.

“One of the main reasons for the failure of the treatment is that the hormones are not delivered at the same moment every day,” explains Marta Cerruti, professor of materials engineering at McGill University and lead author of the study. “And the reason why that happens is because it’s a very stressful process for the woman.”

The innovation in this patch is that it allows the drug to be programmed to be injected at the desired time. For example, a woman receiving hormone injections could wear the patch on her skin, perhaps for a week, during which time the injections would be administered automatically at the same time each day.

Specifically, the patch is composed of hydrogel microneedles filled with nanoparticles, which, when stimulated by infrared light, release leuprolide, a key hormone for in vitro fertilization.

“If we could ease the process of you getting a good quality egg by having an automated microneedle patch. I think this could potentially increase the success rate,” says Vivienne Tam, medical writer.

Beneficial for other diseases

It should be noted that the light-triggered microneedle patch is not a new technology. The innovative aspect lies in the fact that this is the first time that a light-activated microneedle patch does not release any foreign substances into the body.

“In order to release a drug with light, we have to break the bonds in the matrix where the drug is contained. The only light we can use to break these bonds is ultraviolet light,” explains Cerruti. However, we know that ultraviolet (UV) light is carcinogenic and should be avoided as much as possible.

“What we did was put very special nanoparticles into the stamp that are capable of transforming infrared light into ultraviolet light,” explains the researcher.

Her goal was to use these nanoparticles, but without releasing them into the body, as they could be harmful. “With this idea of microneedle technology, we put them in a matrix with microneedles that prevent the nanoparticles from passing into the body. Only the drug is released by the particles with infrared light,” she said.

Ultimately, the technology could be useful for other health conditions, such as diabetes or multiple sclerosis.

A collaborative effort

The discovery was possible thanks to a collaboration among researchers from different universities such as McGill University, L’institut national de la recherche scientifique in Varennes and Université de Montréal, says Cerutti.

“When (Tam) came along we developed a different type of coating. I always thought it would be much better if these particles didn’t go in the blood. And so I had in my mind this idea that we could have a patch with some needles, like micro needles that would hold the particles. And then I met this professor at Université de Montréal, Davide Brambilla, and his whole work is on making these micro needle patches and then he liked my idea. And (Tam), my student, is the person that came up with the idea of IVF.”

Tam herself came into IVF research after hearing about her two aunts go through the process.

“I heard their stories of how difficult it was to administer these injections themselves. And as I was researching about what there is for IVF, there really isn’t much research and that’s the case for actually a lot of women’s health and reproductive health issues in general. And so they got me really interested in thinking about how this could be applied for IVF,” she says.

For now, tests have been conducted on rats. Before moving on to clinical trials on humans, further tests on larger animals must be conducted. It could therefore take several more years before Health Canada evaluates the device and decides whether or not to approve it.

“I’m really hoping that this project, of course I would love for it to become something more, but also if it could inspire more people to work on IVF and more researchers to work on women’s health in general, even to fund women’s health projects, I think that would be a huge, huge success,” Tam adds.

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The Canadian Press’s health coverage is supported by a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. The Canadian Press is solely responsible for this journalistic content.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews