Auxogyn Initiates Clinical Study for Non-Invasive Embryo Assessment Technology Used During In Vitro Fertilization

MENLO PARK, California, July 4, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

Auxogyn, Inc., a privately held medical technology company focused on women's reproductive health, today announced that it initiated a multi-center clinical study to validate its early embryo viability assessment (Eeva™) System for use in in vitro fertilization (IVF). The Eeva System is designed to be used by embryologists to help identify, by day 3 of incubation, which embryos are most likely to continue development into blastocysts, a critical time point in human development that happens on day 5.  Auxogyn believes its Eeva System, with its ability to provide additional information on embryo viability to IVF clinical teams at an earlier timepoint, has the potential to improve clinical pregnancy rates for IVF patients.

"We are extremely pleased to reach this important clinical and corporate milestone, bringing our Eeva System one step closer to helping the large number of families struggling with infertility today," said Lissa Goldenstein, president and chief executive officer of Auxogyn. "The study initiated today is designed to confirm that our Eeva System, which combines time-lapse embryo imaging with our proprietary computational algorithm, will identify the embryos most likely to develop to the blastocyst stage."

Study Details

This observational study will evaluate embryos from four IVF clinics in the San Francisco Bay Area. The goal of this study is to demonstrate that the Eeva System may be used to identify embryos at cleavage stage that are most likely to form blastocysts. These predictions will be compared to the actual blastocyst outcome as observed at the clinical sites. Further information on the criteria for patient eligibility and study methods is available at http://www.ClinicalTrials.gov.  

Additional clinical studies will be required prior to commercial distribution of the device in the U.S., and are in the planning stages.

About the Eeva™ System

Auxogyn's proprietary non-invasive early embryo viability assessment (Eeva) System is based on early human embryo development research conducted by Stanford University and published in the October 2010 issue of Nature Biotechnology. The Eeva System is designed to be used by embryologists  as an adjunct to traditional morphology to identify, at an early stage of development, embryos with a high probability to reach the blastocyst stage. These embryo(s) would then be selected for transfer to the patient.  The Eeva System consists of an imaging component within the IVF incubator, a proprietary culture dish, image analysis software that automatically measures specific parameters during embryonic development and a prediction algorithm.  

About Auxogyn

Auxogyn is a privately held medical technology company focused on advancing women's reproductive health by applying its novel scientific and clinical knowledge of early human developmental biology to the field of assisted reproduction and in vitro fertilization procedures. Auxogyn is funded by the leading life science venture firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, TPG Biotechnology and Merck Serono Ventures. For more information regarding Auxogyn please visit http://www.auxogyn.com.