Scientist creates embryo 'Velcro'
17 October 2003
A young Auckland scientist has created a biological "Velcro" that makes an embryo stick to the sides of its mother's womb.
Inventor Debbie Blake said so far it had been proven only in fertile mice. But if it works in women who have difficulty in getting pregnant naturally, it could lift the success rate of implanting "test-tube" babies from 30 per cent to around 50 per cent.
The bond works for just long enough to get the embryo attached to the womb – about three days – and then dissolves naturally, leaving no lasting effects on the baby.
Dr Blake was the first person to enrol for a doctorate when the former Auckland Institute of Technology became the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) in January 2000. Today she becomes its first doctoral graduate.
The "Velcro" is a microscopic layer of molecules that attaches to the embryo like a coat of paint and helps it to connect to the wall of the womb.
Richard Fisher of Auckland's Fertility Associates, said other "glues" to connect the embryo to the womb were available on the market, but Dr Blake's system appeared to be different. He could not comment further until details were published.
Dr Blake said it was a rare genuine breakthrough in science that came from bringing together two completely separate fields – her own specialty of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), and the science of blood groups, the field of her supervisor, Professor Steve Henry.
Dr Blake turned down offers to do her doctorate in top universities in Europe, the United States and Australia, after Prof Henry convinced her that his method of creating a skin of molecules around blood cells could also work for a human embryo.
At the time, AUT was still a technical institute, had no expertise in fertility, and had no suitable laboratory. In her first year, Dr Blake worked in a garage at Prof Henry's home in Howick.
"You can imagine me standing in there in the middle of winter with a little one-bar heater saying, 'I could be in Sweden with state-of-the art equipment surrounding me'," she said.
"For the first year, I was a bit worried. At one point I said to my husband, `I don't know whether this is going to work. Should I keep going?'
"He said, 'yes, keep going.' He has been a great support. My mother has been my unpaid lab technician for the last three years. I've had unbelievable support."
When the new process first succeeded in creating a sticky skin around a living cell, towards the end of her first year on the project, Dr Blake could hardly believe it.
"I was shocked. It was like, get away – it does work!" she said.
"In the third year of my PhD I was still thinking, 'God, it is really working, isn't it? I'm not kidding myself, am I?'"
Prof Henry is an expert on a rare blood type found in Maori and other Polynesian people, where molecules from the colourless fluid part of blood can cross into the membrane of red blood cells.
"I thought, maybe we could make those molecules do a whole new job," he said.
He developed a system which Dr Blake used with embryos that were only a few days old and about a quarter of the size of the fullstop at the end of this sentence.
She lifted them with a pencil-sharp suction device and placed them in a solution for about one hour at room temperature – just long enough for some molecules from the solution to attach themselves to the embryo.
Dr Blake planned to test the technique on mice that had not been able to get pregnant naturally.
Prof Henry was now looking for another doctoral student to work with Dr Blake and others, to produce a system that could be licensed for use in animals by 2007.
It would take several more years beyond that to carry out trials in human volunteers, before the system could be made available for widespread use in IVF clinics
