Engineers from Barcelona,Spain based startup has developed “Sperm-Injecting Robot” to fertilize human egg
Engineers from one startup based in Spain’s Barcelona has developed a “sperm-injecting robot” that successfully fertilised more than a dozen eggs, resulting in the birth of “two twin girls” in a major breakthrough in the field of IVF (in-vitro fertilisation ).
A review from MIT University said that Barcelona based startup called “Overture Life” has developed a technology which claims that their device is an initial step towards automating IVF. The company claimed that this new technological development can make the entire IVF procedure less expensive, more accessible and affordable to those who need it.
IVF is a fertility treatment that involves fertilization of an egg with sperm outside of the human body and later fertilized egg implanting back into the uterus of the woman. As per available data IVF treatment has helped nearly produce 5 lakh babies globally every year, many individuals who need IVF cannot access it due to financial or logistical barriers.
Overture Life hopes that their technology will help increase access to fertility medicine, ultimately resulting in more babies being born through IVF.
Sperm-injecting robot was developed by the Engineers of the company which packed and delivered to New Hope Fertility Centre in New York City. They reassembled the instrument here, putting together a microscope, a mechanized needle, a tiny petri-dish, and a laptop.
Sperm-injecting robot technology discovered by chance when when one of the engineers, who had no correlation with IVF or fertility medicine before, used a “Sony PlayStation 5 controller” – Yes! You read that correctly: to position a robotic needle. After viewing a human egg with a camera, it moved forward on its own, penetrating the egg and releasing a single sperm cell, and this procedures had produced healthy embryos, according to the researchers, and now two baby girls, whom they claim are the first people born after fertilisation by a “robot.”
“I was calm. In that exact moment, I thought, ‘It’s just one more experiment,’” said Eduard Alba, the student mechanical engineer who commanded the sperm-injecting device.
But there are some doubts, according to a fertility doctor quoted in the MIT University review, “the concept is extraordinary, but this is a baby step.” In the 1990s, he is credited with developing the fertilization procedure known as intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection, or ICSI. The doctor also stated that Overture’s researchers still required manual assistance for tasks such as loading a sperm cell into an injector needle. “This is not yet robotic ICSI, in my opinion,” he said.
News Resource – hindustantimes.com, April 28, 2023
