Researchers have now proven that factory-style robotics can help conceive human life via in vitro fertilization (IVF) — with 10 times the precision of human doctors.
The new IVF bot, called the ‘ART Pipetting Robot for the IVF Laboratory’ (APRIL), uses a pre-programed mechanical arm with a lab-grade eyedropper-like tool, or pipette, protected within a glass enclosure.
The liquid-handling robot has been customized to expertly prepare embryo cultures by incubating and nourishing fertilized human eggs in microdroplet culture dishes.
‘Creating the same drops over and over again — that is where the robot can shine,’ explained Dr S. Zev Williams of the Columbia University Fertility Center.
Trials by Dr Williams’ team, published this August, showed that IVF treatment by APRIL increased the total number of usable human embryos by 4.2 percent.
Their official results arrive in the heat of an ever-tightening US presidential race in which Republican candidate Donald Trump has declared himself ‘the father of IVF.’
The former president’s curious comments — in which he appears to take credit for the groundbreaking IVF research that won British physiologist Dr Robert G. Edwards a 2010 Nobel Prize — have confounded observers across the political spectrum.
Researchers have now proven that factory-style robotics can help conceive human life via in vitro fertilization (IVF) — with 10 times the precision of human doctors. Above, the Columbia University Fertility Center’s APRIL robot in action
During a Fox News town hall event Tuesday, Trump attempted to stake a claim publicly to being not only the father, but also a champion of IVF.
‘We really are the party for IVF,’ Trump told Fox News host Harris Faulkner in front of the event’s all-female audience.
‘We want fertilization — and it’s all the way — and the Democrats tried to attack us on it. And we’re out there on IVF even more than them,’ the former president stated.
This year’s election cycle will likely play a decisive role in whether or not more advanced IVF treatment’s like APRIL make it into states like Alabama that are working to put a full stop on the fertility process.
The team behind APRIL reported this year that the robot improved both ‘accuracy and outcome measures’ for prospective parents who had once struggled with fertility issues.
But Dr Williams, an infertility specialist, has noted that the robot is only really intended for certain less repetitive, less tedious aspects of the treatment.
The more sensitive steps in an IVF treatment — like the actual fertilization of an egg with sperm — will likely still be done by trained medical professionals.
When it comes to these steps, as Dr Williams told MIT Technology Review, ‘Humans are far better than a machine.’
‘You pick up a sperm, put it in an egg with minimal trauma,’ the doctor said of this unique human touch, ‘as delicately as possible.’
Above, the new IVF robot, ‘ART Pipetting Robot for the IVF Laboratory’ (APRIL), in its protective glass enclosure. The new trials also showed that the automated treatment increased the total number of usable human embryos created via IVF by 4.2 percent
Writing in the medical journal Fertility and Sterility, the team suggested that ‘the use of an automated robotic system for preparation of embryo culture dishes’ might help in ‘reducing the need for trained laboratory personnel.’
Their hope is that APRIL could one day reduce the cost of IVF treatments for aspiring parents, given that IVF via medical technicians typically cost tens of thousands of dollars per attempt, often out of pocket.
‘Coverage for IVF care varies widely depending on your health insurance,’ as the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine warned.
‘Fertility treatment is often outside of standard benefits,’ according to the center.
The new trials reported several key ways in which the machine improved on IVF treatments by just humans alone.
The tech helped maintain the right acid-base pH balance in fluid around the developing embryo, they noted, keeping it closer to the optimal levels that help it grow and develop: a pH between 7.281-7.33 compared to 7.275-7.311 via humans.
Within the cells of a growing embryo, these pH levels play a role in multiple biochemical reactions.
The right pH helps to regulate cell division and differentiation, enzyme activities and the formation blastocoel barriers.
In part thanks to those more ideal conditions, the APRIL robot’s embryos also showed better growth progress and development, which they measured on the third and fifth day of the procedure.
The sixth day growing in the culture is typically the last possible day before the embryo needs to be inserted into a womb for a mother to continue the pregnancy.
Dr Williams and his team found that APRIL’s management lead to 92.4 percent development on Day 3 compared to 82.6 percent development via the standard human operator methods.
Development on Day 5 was 19.75 percent for the APRIL robot vs. 15.57 percent for a medical professional working with their hands.
Above, APRIL transfers mixed reproductive material into an embryo culture dish via a pipette
The team noted in their paper however that some of these results would need to be re-tested at with more embryos to see if they were truly repeatable, or to confirm that these percentages carried statistical significance.
If it passes these future expanded trials, APRIL will make a reality of IVF concepts that date further back than even IVF pioneer Dr Edwards’ first achievements.
The concept of automated, machine-tooled IVF of human beings was first proposed publicly by Aldous Huxley in his 1932 science fiction novel, ‘Brave New World.’
Huxley’s book is often cited as the first to predict the arrival of Dr Edwards’ landmark IVF work decades ahead of his first success in 1978, with the birth of the world’s first ‘test tube baby,’ Louise Brown, July 25.
Before Dr Edwards became the ‘father of IVF,’ in other words, the concept was a gleam in novelist Aldous Huxley’s eye.
Responding to Trump’s ‘father of IVF’ comments on the tarmac between campaign stops in Detroit, his presidential opponent Vice President Kamala Harris said, ‘Let’s not be distracted by his choice of words.’
‘The reality is his actions have been very harmful to women and — and families in America on this issue.’
‘If what he meant is taking responsibility, well, then, yeah, he should take responsibility for the fact that one is three women in America lives in a Trump abortion ban state.’
