Making the eggs young again: A new successful solution to age related infertility for $100,000

Dr. Zang & the first 3 parent baby born in US, New Hope Fertility Center.

In 1859, Charles Darwin published his ground-breaking theory ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection which says that “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” It immediately took the scientific world by storm.

And now a new startup called Darwin Life is pushing the boundaries in the field of assisted reproductive technology by offering controversial fertility treatment to older women to help them get pregnant.  

They are offering to discover and mitigate the “dead-end” mutations to promote evolutionary changes, thus coming face to face with Darwinism by doing the “natural selection” in laboratory.

Darwin Life is conceived by Dr. John Zhang, Founder of New Hope Fertility Center NHFC) which deploys a cutting-edge fertility treatment “spindle nuclear transfer.”

Spindle nuclear transfer (SNT) is one of the 3 types of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) nuclear transfer, the other two being Germinal Vesicle Transfer and Pronuclear Transfer.

It was originally developed to prevent inheritance of Mitochondrial diseases.  SNT helps in minimizing mutated mtDNA transmission from oocytes to pre-implantation embryos.

Mutations in mitochondrial DNA are maternally inherited and are responsible for causing many debilitating disorders without definitive treatment. Diseases of the mitochondria appear to cause the most damage to cells of the brain, heart, liver, skeletal muscles, kidney and the endocrine and respiratory systems.

Dr. Zhang claims that this procedure can “rejuvenate eggs” of aging women between the age of 42 to 47 years who have very little chances of becoming pregnant.

The process is still controversial and is banned in United States. In February 2015, United Kingdom became the first country to legalize mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT), with a clause “only when a couple is at very high risk of having a child with a life-threatening genetic disease.”

Darwin Life is offering the treatment overseas, the first baby-boy was born with this technique to a mother whose two children have died previously at age of 8 months and 6 years due to Leigh syndrome. The procedure was performed in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Zang and other experts believe that faulty mitochondria are responsible for age related infertility. These older women are unable to produce viable embryos, bringing in his logic of harnessing young eggs.  

US laws forbids any type of research on genetically modified embryo, including those made using the nuclear transfer technique.

To avoid breaking any laws, Darwin life will make the embryos in US, but embryo transfer will be performed at New Hope’s clinic in Guadalajara, Mexico, or in other countries that does not have regulatory laws.

Many reproductive biologists, ART specialist have questioned Zang’s decision to commercialize the technique, labelling it a step forward towards creating “Designer babies”.

Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society, a group that questions advances in biotechnology says “This is a biologically extreme and risky procedure, if you’re talking about using these techniques for age-related infertility, that’s really moving the human experimentation to a very large scale.”

Dr. Zang says Darwin Life will charge $80,000 to $120,000 for spindle nuclear transfer. According to a study, of 8,700 IVF attempts by women over 42 in the U.S. in 2014, only 4% had a successful pregnancy.

The average cost of normal IVF in US is about $12,400 per cycle and on an average many women require 2-3 cycles before they get pregnant.

Zang says that Darwin life had already received hundreds of enquiries from prospective parents. In the future Zang is thinking of combining the technique with editing genes, so that parents can select hair or eye color, or maybe improve their children’s IQ.  A giant leap towards making science fiction of “designer humans” into reality in near future.

All about “Three Parent babies” 

Here is a short video by Darwin life to explain the Nuclear Transfer.