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Ignasi Canals and Agnès Barbat, Oxolife co-founders, with IBEC researchers Anna Seriola and Samuel Ojosnegros (Photo: IBEC).
 29.01.2021

IBEC and Oxolife will combine two pioneering technologies for the study and treatment of female infertility

An innovative project arising from a collaboration between two entities based in the Barcelona Science Park (PCB) –the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and the biotechnology company Oxolife– will allow the availability of treatments aimed at improving embryo implantation, as well as knowledge of the implantation process at an unprecedented level of detail. The initiative has received funding from the State R&D Program Oriented to the Challenges of the Society call of the Spanish National Plan for Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation 2017-2020.

One in seven couples in Europe suffers from fertility problems. Despite the great advances in the in vitro fertilization, the number of embryos that give rise to birth is relatively low, with a success rate of less than one in five. One of the critical factors when it comes to finding a solution to this problem, lies in the difficulty of elucidating the way in which an embryo is implanted, since this process occurs internally and techniques for its study have not yet been developed.

Now, the biotechnological startup Oxolife, focused on the development of drugs to improve female fertility, and the Bioengineering for Reproductive Health Lab at IBEC will combine two pioneering technologies to respond to an unmet need for millions of women in assisted reproductive technology processes.

Oxolife, under the scientific direction of Dr. Ignasi Canals, is developing a first-in-class drug OXO-001, also the first and only one of its kind, which seeks to respond to an unmet medical need: increasing embryo implantation and pregnancy rates with a direct action on the endometrium (the uterus tissue where embryos are gestated). Currently, OXO-001 is already in the clinical phase.

On the other hand, the laboratory of Dr. Samuel Ojosnegros at IBEC is one of the teams that has made the greatest advances in this field, developing an ingenious synthetic system, one of a kind, that allows the study of embryo implantation by using animal models.

The OXO-001 molecule that increases embryo implantation and is already in the clinical phase, will be studied using an innovative system of synthetic matrices developed by the team of Dr. Samuel Ojosnegros in the Open Innovation Lab at IBEC.

» For further information: IBEC website [+]

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