Grant: Project Grant

Infertility affects 17% of couples and 200 million individuals globally seeking to have children. Male factor infertility is implicated in 50% of infertility cases, a number that is growing as men today have half the sperm counts as their fathers. Yet, there are few treatment options for men and consequently we are treating women for a disease in men. Thus, it is imperative to advance male infertility diagnosis and treatment to reduce the health risks and emotional burden borne by women during infertility treatment. The main treatment for infertility, In vitro fertilization (IVF) costs about $20K CAD per cycle, with an average of 4 cycles of treatment needed to achieve a pregnancy. The emotional and financial toll of ART is profound as there is a high rate of treatment failure at 70% per cycle. In 2023, there were 2.5 million annual treatment cycles worldwide; a number that is increasing annually at a rate of 10%. Consequently, fertility clinics are oversubscribed and need to increase efficiency and improve success rates. There is a lack of progress in methods of semen analysis and diagnosing male infertility which have not advanced in >50 yrs. There is an urgent need to improve fertility diagnosis for men, to improve treatment success rates, reduce the financial burden borne by couples and make clinics more efficient. This project will clinically validate and lead to the commercialization of a new male fertility diagnostic that is based on a genomic based approach of testing sperm to improve the accuracy of diagnosing infertility, getting at the root causes of infertility and provide optimized treatment plans for couples.