- If this becomes a reality,
it could mean that same sex couples
could be able to one day have biological children
of their own.
- We could basically just take a blood sample,
and turn those blood cells, first into stem cells,
and then ultimately into viable, human eggs.
- That might sound like science fiction,
but it's a very real process called IVG—
a breakthrough that has the potential
to allow anyone unable to get pregnant for any reason
to have biological children.
So far, IVG has only been successfully performed in mice.
However, a fast-growing and well-funded startup
in Berkeley, California, is looking to make it a reality
for a current generation of would-be parents.
- If this works,
it could be one of the most significant technologies
that are ever created.
- What is IVG?
- It's an acronym.
You're not gonna use that, are you?
So, IVG stands for in vitro gametogenesis.
In vitro means, "in glass."
Gametes for eggs and sperm.
Genesis means "creation of or birth of."
So, in vitro gametogenesis is making eggs and sperm
outside of the body, inside a laboratory.
- This is Hank Greely, a Stanford law professor
who specializes in thinking
about the consequences of exactly this kind of technology.
- What's so interesting about the potential for IVG is
to be able to take skin cells
turn them into these induced pluripotent stem cells
which can become any cell type,
and then build things from them.
Build organs, build embryos, build eggs and sperm.
- So, anyone who's not able
to have biological children now, could have their own kids
with the arrival of IVG.
People like same-sex couples, older people,
and those experiencing infertility,
which affects over 45 million couples worldwide.
- Some people say, "They can always adopt,
they could use a donor egg, donor sperm."
"People don't need to have genetic babies," and that's true,
but many people really want to, and they suffer.
- Since all IVG would require
is a simple blood sample,
it could essentially end infertility,
or at least it would end infertility
if someone figures out how to make it work in humans.
Enter Matt Krisiloff, a tech investor,
and the CEO of Conception,
a startup determined to make IVG a reality—and soon.
- I became super interested
really from a personal standpoint.
I think it's a really great thing just to give more choice
rather than there being hard, biological restrictions
in terms of how people are able to have children.
- Before Conception,
Krisiloff led the research nonprofit at Y Combinator,
one of the most successful startup accelerators in history.
- I was funding all sorts of interesting,
policy and scientific research,
and there was a paper that came out of a lab in Japan,
where they had actually managed to do
in vitro gametogenesis successfully in mice
all the way to live, healthy birth.
- Krisiloff visited IVG labs around the world.
And while the research astounded him,
he was disappointed in its slow pace,
and how under-resourced these projects seem to be.
- I was getting answers from the academics
that it would be 20, 30-year type of timeframe.
I just really believed that people were not approaching
this the exactly correct way.
- Krisiloff decided to utilize his access
to high-profile tech investors
and found two co-founders
who were equally as dedicated to his vision:
bioscientists Pablo Hurtado and Bianka Seres.
- I think personally and being honest, I'm gay.
The fact that I cannot have biological children,
it's always been a struggle for me.
So, this field gave me that hope.
- All three shared the same sentiment,
to realize the dream of Conception,
it had to be taken out of academia
and into the world of startups.
- I really feel like we've taken the approach of
an engineering problem.
If you just break it down into small enough buckets
then you can assemble a team,
where you can work on and isolate the key problems
at each of those stages at the same time.
- Three years into their work,
Conception's staff has grown to 28 scientists,
and their new estimate for when IVG will be ready
is far more ambitious than when they started.
- Everything in our work is really oriented at this point
around creating a proof-of-concept human egg.
- You can only take what the ovaries can produce.
And so, one of the huge challenges were like,
how do you hijack the human body
and get more cells, more eggs, more embryos.
- So these here are human-induced
pluripotent stem cells.
So you can take blood or skin cells,
and generate these beauties here.
What's really exciting about these cells
is that they can become almost any cell in the human body
if you put them in the right conditions.
- These days, I'm confident that within a couple of years
at least in a proof-of-concept way,
we should actually be able to have this in humans.
- Ethical and legal questions
have always dogged fertility science.
Who will have access to the technology?
Will it bring on a generation of designer babies?
- The idea is we can edit the embryo's DNA
in a way to give babies, basically, superpowers.
Give them the intelligence and the sports ability,
and the personality and so on.
- But that's not really even possible with IVG,
at least not yet.
- With IVG, you could make a hundred embryos for a couple,
and tell the parents, "Okay, here's everything
genetics can tell us about these hundred embryos."
Now, that's still not designer babies,
because you're still only working
with what the parents have to give you.
- The choices IVG could offer to parents
is one of the things Krisiloff is most excited about.
- If we can generate unlimited egg cells
and create a wide quantity of embryos,
that would really open the door for genetic selection
and even genetic editing for disease purposes one day.
- I think the timeline could be accelerated,
but I don't think it should be.
We really need to be confident
that these artificially-produced
eggs and sperm,
don't lead to a vast increase in miscarriages
and still births.
And that I think, realistically,
should take at least 10 years.
- After we have a proof-of-concept human egg,
everything in the company will really shift more
towards a optimization and safety type of framework.
So we'll be doing a lot of benchmarking of our embryos
against more traditional embryos,
and then we'll also be doing animal testing.
We'll wanna be creating animal offspring
to make sure that these are safe and healthy too.
- Conception is optimistic that
clinical trials in humans are possible
within a 5 to 10-year timeframe.
- I've known enough infertile people
to know that, to some of them, it's a terrible curse.
It's a terrible blight on their lives.
- If we can do this properly and safely,
and we can really bring the cost down
to being something accessible for everyone,
in a 50-year type of timeframe,
I really think there's a possibility
that this could become the default way
people choose to have children.
- The aim here isn't to convince everyone
that this is the way to reproduce.
I think the aim is to give people the option
to have children this way
if that's the right decision for them.