Women hoping to conceive through in vitro fertilization often undergo two weeks of grueling hormone injections to mature and collect eggs. A New York startup called Gameto hopes to dramatically reduce or eliminate those injections — and their side effects such as headaches, nausea, and pain — by maturing eggs in a lab dish.
The company is based on stem cell research from Harvard University geneticist George Church’s lab. Last year, his group showed they could create miniature ovaries-in-a-dish complete with vital supportive components known as granulosa cells that release hormones needed to grow an egg.
Building upon that work, which Gameto partly funded, the startup has made its own stem cell-derived granulosa cells that are mixed with a collected egg to nurture and mature it. On Wednesday morning, the company announced that it raised a $33 million Series B to test and commercialize the fertility treatment, called Fertilo.
“It’s almost like mimicking what happens in a young, healthy ovary,” Gameto CEO Dina Radenkovic told Endpoints News in an interview.
Radenkovic thought about freezing her own eggs a few years ago, but worried about keeping her job through the side effects of hormone injections. When Gameto began studying Fertilo, she volunteered to donate her own eggs for the clinical trial to ensure that the matured eggs and fertilized embryos are normal.
“I wanted to, myself, frankly test how is it different,” she said. “I took only a half day off work. It’s still obviously a medical procedure; I wouldn’t recommend it as a massage or a spa day. But it is something that’s easier for women to do.”
Radenkovic said that Fertilo will be regulated as a biologic in the US. Her company is currently in talks with the FDA to jump straight into a Phase 3 efficacy study, based on safety evidence from lab tests with human embryos and animal models. She wouldn’t say when that trial might begin.
Gameto is also planning commercial launches of its treatment in Australia and Latin America, where the product is regulated as an in vitro product used outside the body, rather than a drug.
“We’re now following the first couples that got pregnant ex-US, and we hope to publish that in the future as well,” Radenkovic said.
Two Sigma Ventures and RA Capital led the new funding, and several existing investors chipped in as well. New investors include the US Fertility Innovation Fund; Ingeborg Investments, which focuses on women-led startups; Stacey Bendet Eisner, CEO of women’s clothing company alice + olivia; and Chelsea Hirschhorn, CEO of baby and maternal product company Frida.