Gameto, a female-led biotechnology company with a mission to redefine women’s healthcare, today announced new research outlining the cellular engineering and manufacturing techniques underlying Fertilo, their novel investigational in vitro maturation (IVM) solution containing engineered ovarian support cells (OSCs) to mature eggs outside of the body. These data underscore that Gameto’s quality by design strategic product development supports the manufacturing of OSC-IVM for clinical and commercial use.
“This study is the first to demonstrate the end-to-end process by which a therapy developed from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) has the potential to enhance in vitro fertilization (IVF) outcomes and advance women’s health, paving the way for its application in clinical settings,” said Dr. Dina Radenkovic, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Gameto.
Gameto’s novel approach uses cellular engineering to create a pure population of highly potent ovarian support cells (OSCs) from a female clinical-grade human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC) line that recreates the dynamic, bidirectional follicular environment in a dish when co-cultured with immature eggs. Gameto has previously published that co-culturing immature human eggs with OSCs results in higher rates of egg maturation and euploid embryo formation.1
“This study highlights the core underlying mechanism of action of our ovarian support cells in maturing eggs outside of the body and provides a deeper look into the role that Fertilo plays in promoting high quality egg maturation for IVF treatment,” said Dr. Christian Kramme, Chief Scientific Officer of Gameto. “We are effectively creating an active cell therapy in a dish, which differs significantly from the media solutions that are currently used for in vitro maturation. These data suggest the applications of this technology could expand beyond OSC-IVM and be used to address additional women’s health and fertility issues as well.”
These data demonstrate how Gameto developed a clinical-grade manufacturing process for Fertilo, including using GMP-grade raw materials and a commercial-grade hiPSC line to yield a highly scalable, consistent, and potent production of their OSCs for clinical use. The researchers also found a high degree of similarity between OSCs derived from hiPSCs and the natural support cells of the ovary, compared with available data of in vivo ovaries from the human cell atlas.
Additionally, using the same gene engineering method for both research-use-only hiPSCs and clinical-grade hiPSC lines resulted in OSCs that were similar on a molecular and functional level. These results suggest Gameto could broaden its platform to include a wider range of donor cells, such as those derived from patients, for potential uses like disease modeling. This supports a potential expansion into additional applications and indications within women’s health and fertility medicine.
The manuscript, titled “Reproducible differentiation of pure ovarian support cells from clinical-grade hiPSCs as a novel infertility treatment,” is available on a preprint server at https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.04.29.591741v1, and Gameto is submitting it for scientific peer-review for potential publication.
Gameto is currently engaged in rigorous preparations to meet the FDA’s conditions for Phase 3 trial initiation. For more information about Gameto and how the company is redefining women’s healthcare, visit gametogen.com.
