The Future Of Fertility Science | The Baby Makers - Part 2/2 | CNA Documentary

[Music] baby making is embracing technology around the world in india artificial intelligence is helping improve ivf treatment for infertile couples we have seen this technology evolve slowly and now by leaps and bounds in denmark go inside what's claimed to be the world's largest sperm bank where demand is booming well good sperm should be swimming it's straight up here it shouldn't go round in circles it shouldn't lie still a singapore engineer has come up with a low-tech way to help sperm reach the egg during sex i wanted to create something that couples can use in the privacy of their home to help them conceive faster meet a japanese entrepreneur breaking barriers with products aimed at women in a field known as femtech people often think that we're selling sex stories right but we're not anything that we insert inside vagina is apparently considered a sex toy and but we're not and scientists in asia and israel are studying artificial wombs that could one day save premature babies and much more 15 million babies born pre-term each year around the world and that's almost certainly an underestimate at least a million of those will die the future of baby making might look very different [Music] india the second most populous country in the world and soon to be number one but there's another story here declining fertility and distressed couples [Music] [Music] we're both part of joint families and i mean you know you go home and this is kind of the favorite topic right i mean you'll be told next time please we we want three of you to come i think it was funny at first and then it just got super irritating later on alak and sonam are one of many couples facing baby pressures in india for the past four years they've been trying to conceive through in vitro fertilization or ivf so we got the laparoscopy done and we were told that the fallopian tubes were blocked in 2021 india's fertility rate dropped to two births per woman the first time it's ever been below the replacement rate this was hailed as diffusing a population bomb but infertility is increasing here especially among the young an estimated 10 to 15 percent of the population have fertility issues at a mumbai hospital an infertility expert is checking on an embryo he's seeing an increasing number of patients first factor which is affecting fertility in the country is life cells are changing uh then of course another common factor is contamination in the general environment that may be contributing third is stis infection another big player in our country has been tuberculosis tuberculosis can affect genetical organs as well can block the tubes can damage the uterus can damage the ovaries infertility and ivf are still sensitive topics for some people here that's one of the reasons couples don't seek treatment initial few months we did not inform our parents so we were like we have to manage our own anxiety i cannot take your anxiety as of now i think when we came out and we told them that we told our parents that you know we're going through ivf and this is how the process goes it's going to take some time so you need to have patience they were actually quite relieved quite happy and thank god for that they were they have been very supportive throughout fertility expert dr faruza parikh is a specialist assigned to sonam's case i saw the sad plight of women who were supposedly infertile here we i would see them with hopeless faces no smiles on the face and being treated badly by society and i decided at that point that this is the field i want to specialize in i want to bring smiles to the faces of women to the faces of couples she hopes society will gain a better understanding of assisted reproductive technology ivf sometimes is considered unnatural ivf is sometimes considered to give abnormal babies so when all these stigmas and taboos and misunderstandings are removed and when the science is explained to couples i think that is the time when people will be more forthcoming but ivf is expensive and only one percent of infertile couples seek treatment and i also believe that like a lot of private practice that we surely can also do contribute by doing what is known as individual social responsibility as a healthcare provider you have to discount yourself you have to do social work by reducing your charges you but not at the cost of compromising the level of care new and improved technology is now available for those struggling with infertility initially ivf did not give good results the results were very low we have seen this technology evolve slowly and now by leaps and bounds what we are seeing is this technology gives sucker not just to infertile couples but also to fertile couples who are bogged down with genetic diseases mumbai's justlock hospital is among the first in the world using a new software backed by artificial intelligence this software is called ubar the system is fed millions of data points with genetic and biochemical information about embryos from all over the world the algorithm then predicts which embryos have the best chance of successful implantation this technology is beautiful it depends on the machine to keep learning and learning so as the technology grows as it sees more use in fact the costing would come down and this kind of technology driven work is what is going to give us good results in israel one of the developers of the software being used in mumbai is getting ready to launch her next ai offering in a few months hi hello hi rory how are you okay well i just wanted to talk to you about the meeting next week and uh if we're if we're getting to where we need to be and it will be great to go over with the graphic designer talk with ana from the very first days of embryonics we understood that in order to disrupt the field of fertility and bring you know tangible tools that will bring tangible improvement in success rates it's not enough to have one piece of technology that focuses on one area or one problem coming soon is ai to screen for genetic problems with embryos the status quo is to take a tissue sample first of all you need to go through an invasive biopsy that and not always be embryos survive this biopsy and and the other drawbacks of course is price and you need professional people who know how to do it so we're able to rank the embryos according to their potential to be you know health genetically healthy or not and i'm talking about specifically about major conditions like down syndrome and other chromosomal defects that can be um we can screen and then based on this pre-screening screening get decisions of what embryos you want a biopsy or not and i think this is you know very encouraging especially for parents who have few embryos [Music] this gynecologist turned businesswoman also wants to use algorithms to help before the embryo stage ai will predict the best combination of hormones and treatment to help women produce eggs that tool could be 18 months away being a fertility patient going for fertility treatments is you're paying a lot of prices emotionally physically financially my satisfaction is knowing that i'm building something that can that is relevant and important and can change lives of millions of people globally because fertility is is is a growing need globally and it's just the beginning another part of the fertility puzzle is sperm meet the people behind a booming donor industry and for women there are innovations to bring more maternal health care into the home [Music] denmark's second largest city has an interesting claim to fame it's home to what's said to be the largest sperm bank in the world [Music] this is a university town so most donors are students virtual reality goggles are the latest addition replacing traditional material because it has been proved in other studies then if you compare this quality of sperm from a man masturbating or man having a sexual intercourse the sperm quality is better when it's stimulated by sexual intercourse so making it as lively as possible we may be able to improve the quality of the ejaculate the semen is taken into the lab it takes months to become an approved donor as checks are done on the man's family medical history and the quality of his sperm well good sperm should be swimming straight ahead it shouldn't go round in circles it shouldn't lie still it should have one tail not two so you you look at it and you see how it looks you know how a sperm cell should look like and you know how it should swim as a clinical geneticist i used to work in the private hospitals in the private hospitals we see the patients once they have a genetic disease being a geneticist in the sperm bank you are a step before that you actually look at the family history before the genes are distributed so you try to prevent a children getting genetic diseases the sperm is stored in so-called straws in liquid nitrogen at minus 196 degrees so a sperm can be a frozen forever the quality does not decline if we throw it the day after it has been frozen or we thought 20 years after it's been frozen the quality is exactly the same so there's no limitation on the time or the years that we can store sperm the lab is experiencing the busiest day of the year demand for sperm is growing after being hit by kobit 19. we export to more than 100 countries in the world being all the way from cambodia sri lanka and then of course all the markets here in europe so we cover all over the world it depends on the local legislation so it's often that that stands in the way of women being able to to purchase from us [Music] when i first started here i think a lot of people they were they were all giggling so what are you doing in the sperm bank business because they felt okay that's a little bit you know you can you can make a lot of fun of it but actually what i've seen is the business is very serious it's uh it's an amazing you know all the research that actually goes into it i think it's nice to see people working in a sperm bank because they have a feeling of doing something good we all have a feeling of contributing to something very great so it's a nice a nice working environment [Music] in the marketing department is a young woman with a special connection to the company emma gronbeck was conceived with donor sperm that was provided here at home she shares her experiences online and offers advice i'm in the process to become a solo mother by choice any recommendations for me from your perspective okay so my recommendation would be that you are open to conversations with your child and tell the truth from the beginning so that there is no secrets in your family when people heard about me being done conceived they didn't really know how to react because all the things they'd ever heard about it was something negative so i want it to create a more like diverse picture of what donor conception could be like i have known that i was doing conceived since forever my parents did like a children's book that they read to me as a nighttime story from i was three years old or something like that so i've grown up knowing that i was definitely conceived and i think it has made me very secure in myself and in my family because i felt like i was a very very wanted child i think the most important thing was that my parents told the truth i do have an anonymous donor it's not been a problem to me but can be to some people now her parents even take part in online q a sessions we were relatively rational about that henning's your father's sperm count was so low that our chances of conceiving would be really really slim without that help my name is henning and i'm a msr and very happy about it and having him made us a family and at that time back in 96 emma hopes her story will become more common in other parts of the world where similar fertility trends are emerging and i think that the most important thing is love and if we end up in a place where people who love each other and want children have the possibility of of creating the family that they dream of i think that would be amazing i've definitely seen a positive change in people opening up breaking down taboos yeah and i'm very very happy to see it move in that direction so there will be many more people like emma as attitudes and technology change [Music] also changing is how maternal health care is moving away from hospitals in a tel aviv suburb 27 year old gila is expecting her second child she's preparing for an ultrasound exam but this time she's doing it herself so i have a lot of stress and a lot of worries about this uh having this pregnancy for before this pregnancy i had uh two miscarriage so it's uh it's a main issue for me the device attaches to a standard mobile phone it can check on heartbeat fetal movement and even amniotic fluid the resulting video is uploaded for specialists to view i can tell you that my previous previous pregnancy went when i have my son i have a lot of worries i'll go to hospital for each pain it's comfortable when i don't feel comfortable i'm going to the hospital now i don't need it it's really make me feel comfortable it makes me feel secure i can observe my baby i can see the pulse i can see the movement i can see it moving i can see it alive it's like happening she's now more confident about growing her family we are raised to be a mother and father and family and big one i want three kids kids hopefully it's a fan so my son is everything for me just to think about having another one like him it's [Music] one of israel's most experienced ultrasound specialists supported the development of the new device he thinks it's a game changer this is the face you see this is one orbit you can see the spine imagine in in places in rural places where you don't have medical centers everywhere like in big cities and the woman is scanning her fetus and something is wrong and she sends this the movie to the doctor and he says listen come immediately to the hospital there is a problem with the fetus and she rushes to the hospital and then they save the baby's life this is something that couldn't been done before if you didn't do the ultrasound by yourself and send the pictures so it's it's i mean the the entire surveillance of pregnancy is going to be changed [Music] someone leading that change is an ob gyn specialist at israel's largest medical center [Music] he's running a pilot telemedicine project for women with gestational diabetes one week the women do the ultrasound themselves at home [Music] the next week they come into the hospital [Music] it was a pandemic that brought the technology to the forefront [Music] we have pregnant women and women that have delivered with covid19 and we started treating them in the hospital remotely they they collect connected themselves to the fetal monitoring to the ultrasound and then we saw how simple it is we said okay we need to start extending it to home so today's visit was uh very successful and my channel side the patient had no complaints no contractions no bleeding no rupture of membranes and she keeps the baby moving well the team is making a video to share their work with others and they have big plans for the technology here and elsewhere [Music] it could be a patient in the east coast or in germany or in france or in israel and once we take out this geographic limitation and each patient can find the doctor that can help most the problems she has and also address the economics of what she can pay for the treatment i think it's a totally it's a totally new world for medicine the team is part of a newly formed virtual hospital the head of the hospital says it will only grow i actually believe that in maternity care in the future everything except the the maybe c-sections can be done at home gradually it will go to home people won't have to come for house to the hospital for for workups or or visits for clinicians because technology will help us to do it in the house it's already there the technology is already there we have to gain much more experience and much more belief in the technology to see that it can really work and gradually will be fully at home so the trend is to bring pregnancy and fertility care out of traditional hospitals wherever possible [Music] it's also turning into big business as the world of femtech takes shape [Music] in japan there's a startup company in the relatively new field of femtech that's the term for female technology designed to empower women's health and well-being [Music] in a small office above the store is the start-up's co-founder amina sugimoto women's health is largely neglected there are areas within healthcare that are definite needs hidden needs the second thing is there are a lot of investments happening around healthtech femtech was one of the emerging sort of market [Music] and it's big business globally the femtech industry is expected to be worth 75 billion us dollars annually by 2025. amina turned heads when she launched a femtech festival three years ago half of the product i didn't know how to use even but i just display it as an eye exhibition and i wanted to also figure out um how people react how willing people are to you know attend these events and it turns out that over 150 people appeared from north of japan hokkaido to osaka that's when i figured one there's definitely it's not a need to market people want to talk about it located in the heart of tokyo a mena store sells a variety of femtech products they include menstrual underwear menstrual cups and devices to help conception when i started fermat in japan people often think that we're selling sex stories right but we're not anything that we insert inside vagina is apparently considered a sex toy and but we're not after a slow start the femtech sector is taking off in japan the 2021 femtech festival in tokyo attracted 1500 visitors recently amina helped convince government officials to include funding for femtech in the budget japan started to change slightly that there are now a lot more women in their decision making position and those ladies struggle in their career life uh with period or you know with fertility problems having babies pregnancy menopause but they couldn't say anything about it and that they struggle so i think now that we brought femtech sort of industry with an impact they now see it and they now see it it's their responsibility to change something within their ability more companies in japan are now investing in femtech amina is on her way to meet one of them and she's bringing her products with her today she's meeting kentaro thoma who shares a personal interest [Music] oh back at the office amina is getting ready for a trip to singapore where she's expanding her company [Music] she's hoping to do a small-scale femtech event [Music] as she sets up she hopes it'll be the first of many events like this japan is a big market but i think there's a ceiling where singapore i don't think there's a ceiling it seems like the rest of south east asian country seems to be looking what's happening in singapore too so if things go big here the same movement tend to probably followed by other neighboring countries too another benefit i think is that this country is very diverse community rate so for for people for like femtech entrepreneurs to to try to those who are trying to come up with an innovative product they're actually interested more in the community in population that are more diverse than homogenous because it can be applied in other parts of the world as well thanks for coming thank you the next day the festival gets underway the participants include other femtech companies and potential investors it's not painful you just insert inside your bra they're most selling breast pump in the us now in europe and they're coming to japan now as the industry expands over the next few years amina has big hopes i you know i always tell people like i really envisioned a world where we don't no longer have to use the term femtech it will soon become a part of healthtech and this product will become really available at department stores and yeah supermarkets or pharmacies among the products are conception devices including one designed by a local benjamin t went through his own struggles to conceive with his wife well first of all we went through all the checks and unfortunately we were diagnosed with unexplained infertility you know we decided to go through ivf although it's very painful process and you know we succeeded so we succeeded through ivf the entire journey was extremely painful and long for both myself and my wife with many injections was invasive and i wanted to create something that couples can use in the freedom of their home and the privacy of their home to help them conceive faster and that's kind of how we started to look at technologies that could help and the science of conception benjamin co-founded the company in the hopes of providing an affordable and natural method of conception we developed our first product the sperm diet essentially to increase the chances of conception every time couples try [Music] the device is designed to minimize leakage of semen post-intercourse [Music] it's inserted into the vagina prior to sex after ejaculation the male withdraws and a flap springs up [Music] this blocks the backflow of semen channeling the sperm to swim to the fallopian tubes and increase the chance of fertilizing an egg [Music] so frankly when we launched the product we were taken aback and surprised by the overwhelming response at some point we actually even ran out of inventory because we didn't expect that the amount of demand and we realized that there's a gap you know that current invasive procedures may not be able to feel for majority of couples who may not need to go to iui or ivf but want something that they can boost their chances earlier on in their journey so so far we have over a thousand couples using our products both in singapore and united kingdom and we have several pregnancies both in singapore and uk which we're very proud of today benjamin is meeting a couple of investors to share more about his sperm guide when you look at femtech specifically asia is only 10 of the femtech market globally nowadays and so there's a lot of room for growth so we're starting to see more and more products come out from you know this part of the world which are very exciting particularly because there's a lot of cultural nuance in the region and i think all companies coming out of asia are better positioned to be sensitive to those cultural nuances and and you know positioned well to grow versus some of the international players coming into the market so it's a it's a market working we're keeping a close eye on i think there's going to be more and more solutions coming out thanks a lot ben very nice meeting you thank you so much for your time thank you thank you thank you ben benjamin himself has more products available in a lab staff are testing and improving another offering that he thinks is greatly needed we also realize that many couples don't have good data around their health and their hormonal health especially and so we also have launched multiple products now such as the hormone test that they can do at the comfort of their home in order to get accurate data around their hormone levels which have a very dramatic impact on fertility and also at the same time the earlier couples know about their fertility health which is a stigma around asia maybe many parts of the world the earlier you can understand and seek treatment if you need i think if i didn't have the i would say opportunity to experience the stress and the emotional burden of conception i probably would not have started 2 plus and this journey made me realize that many couples in the world are facing the same issues and as an engineer myself i wanted to create an impact and there's nothing probably more impactful than creating life [Music] but high-tech solutions are also moving forward there are some startling new developments in the world of science [Music] [Music] a premature baby is fighting for its life its lungs are simply not ready for the outside world [Music] what would help babies like this survive better [Music] a team of researchers is in western australia to do studies on artificial wombs they're focusing for now on lamb fetuses matt kemp is based in singapore and his colleagues are visiting from japan [Music] the quest is to help premature human babies born on the edge of survival at about 21 to 23 weeks of gestation [Music] the ones who make it often have severe health problems [Music] it varies but you know certainly cerebral palsy blindness uh cardiopulmonary disease so you know significant uh lifelong health challenges and they you know they they impact the individual and of course the family but they also have a fairly significant uh health system cost as well masatoshi saito is an obstetrician who's been doing this research for more than 15 years sometimes i cannot save the baby pretty much a baby so that's the reason i uh i want to do some research and i really want to save that premature baby maybe i can do more for that baby that's that's my feeling so the the one of the rationale around this is really to try to take advantage of the anatomy and the physiology of these babies treat them a bit more like fetuses rather than trying to rush them to adapt to life outside of the uterus so this nifty little device here is actually our artificial placenta and we take this and we use the circuit connectors to link it into the umbilical cord of the feeders and then once that procedure is complete we take the artificial placenta and the fetus we place it inside our artificial uterus here and then we close that up and we commence our treatment process [Music] the lamb is suspended in a liquid electrolyte solution that acts as artificial amniotic fluid tubes attached to the umbilical cord bring blood out to the artificial placenta it's oxygenated here and then sent back to the fetus the whole process is driven by the fetal heart with no external pressure added [Music] scissors please thank you very much [Music] yeah so uh the fetus has grown they grow uh at a rate that we think is normal so at a gross level their long bones grow they get bigger they start to develop wool and they move around like you you hope a fetus would as well so they flex and they extend and they they swallow and breathe and they sleep so it's it's pretty remarkable it's it really brings home i think the importance of of what we're trying to do and you know really the importance of getting this to work at 2007 2008 i i saw the huge number of the failed study but now we can get a huge number of the success so i i feel i feel good i feel good and also uh so i feel uh the future is is very bright as well as the sheep similar experiments with monkeys are just months away their fetuses are more similar to human ones masatoshi has a response for critics who question the research just i said we need we need to do that uh together together development in medical system yeah that's the answer we need it's a huge unmet need you know preterm birth is uh you know leading cause of under five deaths in places like singapore australia and japan 15 million babies born pre-term each year around the world and that's almost certainly an underestimate at least a million of those will die it is a huge global health challenge that has lifelong consequences for for individuals and families and it just strikes me as something that's you know terribly unfair uh this really difficult start to life for so many uh so many people and if we can do something about it then i think we should back in his own lab matt takes advantage of local expertise in molecular analysis this is helping to understand how organs develop during the experiments human trials could be about 10 years away [Music] but he pushes back against talk of fetuses growing completely outside the womb and that's a little bit like saying well if you can hop in a in an airbus and fly from from singles water perth then you can just tweak it a little bit and then you can go to the moon it's it's quite a it's it's quite a leap really and it's it's i think it's not really reflective actually what the technology is or does uh and what it can be used for at a renowned science facility in israel a team led by jacob hannah is also doing artificial womb research with huge potential down the road they've shown in the past year that they can take mouse embryos from the mother and keep them alive outside the uterus for about a third of the entire pregnancy the new uterus is a glass tube where early stage embryos are kept in a nutrient-rich serum they're spun so they don't implant on the sides these early days of development are crucial for mammals and could give insight into human disorders and this happens actually very quickly and within a couple of days in the mouse in humans it takes about two weeks process and this is really when most of the drama is happening it uses the most dramatic morphological changes in the in in the shape and in the organ formation it is important to realize that this relatively short period in which the the organ formation happens is really the period when usually things could go wrong for example most birth defects originate from defects that's happening do this during this process the team estimates about 80 percent of the embryos are nearly identical to those growing inside a mouse uterus so i think this is really highlighting to us that the embryo is a really independent self-organizing entity so it doesn't need the uterus to make the correct shape [Music] but there's a twist none of these are natural embryos the team has moved on to using stem cells from skin and blood that have the ability to create embryo-like structures or embryoids without a fertilized egg [Music] so you can see here now this is a day 10 embryo you can see here the heartbeat you can also see the red because they already have the blood supply it's it's very exciting but i mean scientists we are we're always greedy but yesterday's news is already old news we're now thinking about the next step but in a positive way it's the validation of our logic of trying to make you know how to grow the natural embryo first and then that that would allow us to grow the synthetic embryos which has happened [Music] applied to humans the research would be a massive breakthrough people with infertility or other ailments would use synthetic embryos to help them become their own donors you can have progenitors of eggs or progenitors off of sperm or blood progenitors and harvest these progenitors that can be then expanded and transplanted back to the same patient and again in this case the dna is identical so there's no need there's no difference in dna and there's no need to look for donors um and that is something we want to explore and hopefully make a reality so we're we're going to be very busy for the next 10 years i would say and exciting i think they're going to be some failures but i think they're going to be a lot of successes as well and even further ahead what's possible the question and the idea of can we really achieve or recapitulate entire mammalian pregnancy outside the uterus is an important one and yes we cannot overlook it i mean pregnancy there are a lot of issues with with women who suffer from what's called uterine insufficiency and hard to maintain pregnancy or early early delivery and that and so forth so there is a clinical justification to do that but i think we're still far ahead so it's going to take a lot of development and time i think to reach this however i do think that it can become a reality one day as fertility evolves there are still many technological and ethical considerations to figure out but the future of baby making is going to look different as societies grapple with the question of how many humans do we need [Music] and what are we prepared to do to get them [Music] you

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Length: 46min 17sec (2777 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 27 2022