Womb-on-a-chip may boost IVF successes

July 26, 2007

Can conception, the most intimate of human experiences, be automated?

Teruo Fujii of the University of Tokyo in Japan and his colleagues are building a microfluidic chip to nurture the first stages of pregnancy. They hope, eventually, to create a fully automated artificial uterus in which egg and sperm are fed in at one end and an early embryo comes out the other, ready for implanting in a real mother. They say using such a device could improve the success rate of IVF. (New Scientist)