Fertility Futures

The market for IVF is expected to reach USD 51.73 billion dollars by 2032. There are many developments underway.

Funded by Sam Altman, the CEO of Open AI, among others, California-based company Conception is turning stem cells into human eggs. The technology is called in vitro gametogenesis (IVG) and will "give women the opportunity to have children well into their forties and fifties, eliminate barriers for couples suffering from infertility, and potentially allow male-male couples to have biological children."

Orchid Health, the reproductive technology company whose investors include legendary geneticist Dr. George Church, Ethereum co-founder Vitalkik Buterin, 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki, and Brian Armstrong CEO of Coinbase, is already offering whole genome screening for embryos at IVF clinics.

Screenings can detect rare gene variants known to predispose people to severe obesity, cancer, neurodevelopment disorders, as well as psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar and Alzheimer's.

Another innovation is synthetic embryos or what's clinically called, embryo models, led by developmental biologists including stem cell biologist Jacob Hanna at the Weizmann Institute.

Without the aid of human sperm or egg cell, Hanna's team grew a 14-day-old embryo in the lab that closely mimics the development of a real human embryo, including the placenta, yolk sac, chorionic sac, and other external tissues.

In an interview with Stat News, Hanna explained what's on the horizon: "We start from stem cells. We don’t need to take donated embryos or donated eggs. We don’t need the uterus..."

It's been predicted that by 2036, sex will no longer be how most babies are made.

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