A North Kingstown company’s efforts to make money by freezing unfertilized human eggs have, it seems, come a step closer to bearing fruit.
Gamete Technology Inc. earlier this month signed a deal with a Boston-based ViaCell Inc., giving it the exclusive license to use Gamete’s technology to cryopreserve and store unfertilized human eggs.
Officials from both companies say the technology could solve a number of fertility problems women face, including the detrimental effects of aging and chemotherapy and radiation treatments. For example, the companies envision a day when a woman who chooses to pursue her career but still wants to have kids can freeze her eggs at, say, age 28, and fertilize them years later.
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“Our goal is to develop a widely available, safe and effective option that will help millions of women around the world preserve their ability to conceive,” said Dr. Mehmet Toner, one of the Massachusetts General Hospital researchers who developed the technique, in a recent press release. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Gamete President Nicholas H. Kondon said in a phone interview that the four-employee company will receive a royalty payment each time the technology is commercially offered. ViaCell is obligated to spend a certain amount of money pursuing approval from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, Kondon said.
But exactly what form the technology will take – Will it be a service? A product? A device? – is unknown, a reminder that its commercialization could take years.
While ViaCell will take over development of human-egg application, Gamete is not done with the technology.
Kondon said the deal gives the company a say in how ViaCell proceeds with clinical trial and eventual rollout of the technology, should it eventually receive FDA approval. The company will begin clinical trials at an in-vitro fertilization clinic in Waltham, Mass., Kondon said, and likely will expand the trial to additional sites.
What’s more, Gamete retains the rights to all other applications. Kondon said the company plans to use the technique to freeze and store animal eggs, with potential applications including livestock and racehorse breeding.
A team of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School researchers – Toner, Dr. Thomas Toth and Dr. Ali Eroglu – developed the cryopreservation technique over an eight-year period. Kondon said he learned of the team’s work through Toth, whom he knows through a family member.
Kondon said he negotiated an option agreement with the hospital in 2000 to underwrite the costs associated with patenting the technology. He was able to secure a patent through the help of Clark & Elbing, a Boston law firm specializing in intellectual property.
“In its simplest terms, the patent says that if you inject sugar … into mammal cells with the intent of cryopreserving them, we own the technology,” Kondon said. He said Gamete has patents either secured or pending in about 25 different countries.
Injecting egg cells with the sugar-based cryopreservative prevents water in the cell from forming crystals when it is frozen, which would damage the cell, Kondon said. By cryopreserving the eggs and then freezing them in liquid nitrogen, the cells can be fertilized months or even years later.
That prospect is what Time magazine last year called “the Holy Grail” of in-vitro fertilization research. The July 2002 article said that 40 babies worldwide have been born from frozen eggs.
But the success rate is extremely low – anywhere between 1 and 20 percent, compared with as high as 50 percent success rate for in-vitro fertilization using a fresh sperm and egg.
Kondon said he is aware of attempts to freeze and later fertilize human eggs, including a clinic at the University of Bologna in Italy, which has overseen dozens of successful births from frozen eggs.
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