Dioseve hopes to use technology that grows eggs to help infertility patients
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Dioseve hopes to use technology that grows eggs to help infertility patients.
Dioseve , a Japan-based biotech startup, has an ambitious goal of growing human egg cells, or eggs, from other tissues , TechCrunch reports .
Its goal is to help people battling infertility, and the company recently raised $3 million in a new funding round.
The round was led by ANRI, with participation from Coral Capital.
Dioseve’s mission might sound like it came from science fiction, but it’s based on a scientific technique called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), which was first developed in 2006.
The startup’s scientific advisor, Dr. Nobuhiko Hamazaki, a research specialist at the University of Washington, created Dioseve’s technology, called DIOLs (directly induced oocyte-like cells), which can turn iPS cells into oocytes at scale.
DIOLs are currently undergoing trials and have been published in the scientific journal Nature.
The new funding will allow Dioseve to hire more people and accelerate its research and development.
It aims to establish proof-of-concept by letting mice breed with oocytes produced from DIOLs, and recently opened a new laboratory in Tokyo and hired an iPS specialist.
As Dr. Hamazaki explains, induced pluripotent stem cells can be used to grow all cells in the body.
For example, other researchers are finding ways to use iPS to grow organs outside the body, induce beta cells in the pancreas in an attempt to treat diabetes, and generate neural stem cells to treat spinal injuries.
iPS cells can be made from tissues such as muscle or blood cells.
DIOLs first make primordial germ cells, which are the source of sperm and eggs. It differentiates them, finds oogonia, or precursors to egg cells, and introduces genes into iPS cells.
This means that it is possible for someone who is dealing with infertility to use DIOLs to have offspring with their own genetic material.
In the case of mice, it usually takes 30 days to obtain eggs, while in humans it can take up to 6 months, Dr. Hamazaki said.
The CEO of Dioseve is Kazuma Kishida, who became interested in biotechnology when he was diagnosed with hepatitis C as a teenager. At the time, existing treatments had high side effects and low response rates, so his doctor told him to wait a few years because a new drug was being developed in the United States. T
hree years later, Kishida was treated and cured of his hepatitis C. “This drug has really changed and contributed to the world,” he said. “I want to do something that can change the world like a new drug.”
Dioseve has been thinking a lot about the safety and ethics of DIOLs through conversations with potential patients and experts in science and medical ethics, Kishida said. Now, the questions it is monitoring include the inherited effects of the technology — will it not only produce healthy babies, but avoid health problems in future generations?
“We really take ethical issues seriously. We need to be very careful because this technology can be applied to the process of making children,” Dr Hamazaki said. “We need to have a deep dialogue with society to get a consensus on whether it’s applicable and what we can do. The scope of applying this technology.”
Dioseve isn’t the only biotech startup studying how human egg cells grow. Other companies, including San Francisco-based Ivy Natal and Conception, are also developing ways to grow eggs from other cells. Dioseve says its competitive advantage lies in its research progress and practicality.
Dioseve hopes to use technology that grows eggs to help infertility patients
(source:internet, reference only)
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