Women who are having problems conceiving children and who are cancer patients can still give birth through the process of in vitro maturation, according to researchers at McGill University.
In vitro maturation is a process that takes immature eggs from the ovaries of a woman during a normal menstrual cycle. The eggs are taken and matured in a lab, fertilized and placed back into the uterus.
The process differs from in vitro fertilization, in which the ovaries are stimulated with expensive hormones to produce mature eggs.
"The advantage is having no ovarian stimulation," Dr. Hananel Holzer, Assistant Professor at McGill University's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology told CTV's Canada AM.
The in vitro maturation process is also much cheaper than standard in vitro fertilization methods.
In vitro maturation helped Amir Khan and Kiran Wasi start a family. The couple came from Pakistan to Canada hoping to start a family of their own. Wasi previously had two miscarriages.
"The problem was the eggs would not mature perfectly," Khan told CTV's Canada AM.
Wasi was assessed as a good candidate for the in vitro maturation clinical trials being conducted at McGill and underwent the process. Eggs from her ovaries were matured in a lab, fertilized and then implanted. Wasi was pregnant two weeks later.
The first in vitro maturation birth with an egg that was matured in a lab was reported in Canada by McGill researchers in 1999 and the first birth with a frozen egg was announced in 2005.
"What's special in Kiran's case is that after the eggs were matured in the lab, they were then frozen for two months, thawed later, fertilized and put back as embryos," said Holzer.
The couple's daughter, Noorfatima Khan, now 14 months old, is the first baby in the world who was conceived through the combination of in-vitro maturation and egg freezing.
"If they ask us to volunteer again, we are ready," Khan said.
In vitro maturation can also be beneficial for cancer patients. The side effects of chemotherapy to treat cancer can leave women infertile. Women often do not have time to take fertility drugs before they begin to undergo cancer treatments or cannot have ovarian stimulation required for in vitro fertilization.
But either in vitro fertilization or in vitro maturation can preserve the "fertility potential" of women according to Holzer.
"We can do it via either preserving eggs after ovarian stimulation if we have enough time to give them the medications," Holzer said. "Or in cases when we don't have enough time, we retrieve the eggs without any ovarian stimulation and then mature them in the lab."
The International Society for In Vitro Fertilization is hosting the 14th World Conference on In Vitro Fertilization and the Third World Congress on In Vitro Maturation in Montreal until Sept. 19.
Experts will present their latest research on in-vitro fertilization as well as topics such as stem-cell research.
