University of Rey Juan Carlos

- Leading experts in fertility and human reproduction with more than 1,200 fertility and reproduction-related publications - SAB involved in the clinical management at top global reproductive clinics and research centers worldwide - Support plans to advance clinical development of OXO-001, a novel first in class treatment for infertility BARCELONA, Spain, Nov. 13, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Oxolife, the specialist biotech focused on enhancing embryo implantation in women undergoing Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) fertility treatment, today announces it has appointed globally renowned fertility experts to its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB). There is a very large and growing global infertility market, with 76m women a year affected - approximately 2% of the global female population. With approximately three million assisted reproductive technology cycles each year, of which 50% fail, there is a significant unmet medical problem. More than 30% of procedures fail due to implantation issues, the causes of which are largely unknown, and for which there are no treatment options. Oxolife is developing a novel, easy to administer, non-hormonal, oral pill that boosts endometrial adhesion and invasion of the embryo, a major factor in improving pregnancy success rates. The SAB includes world leading experts in the fertility field who are involved in the clinical management at some of the top global reproductive clinics and research centers. They have a track record of nearly 1,200 fertility and reproduction-related publications. The SAB will be instrumental in advancing the development of OXO-001. Juan García-Velasco, Chief Scientific Officer of IVIRMA and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of Oxolife, commented: "Millions of women undergo assisted reproductive technology cycles each year, with many of these cycles failing, and with no treatment options, it can be a very challenging time. We are very pleased to support the development of this innovative therapy which offers the potential to help millions of women worldwide conceive." Agnès Arbat, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Medical Officer of Oxolife, said: "Oxolife's vision is to develop the first treatment that improves embryo implantation, a major factor in improving pregnancy success rates for women undergoing Assisted Reproductive Technology treatment. The experience and track record of this leading international Scientific Advisory Board will be invaluable in supporting our plans to accelerate the development of OXO-001." Scientific Advisory Board Professor Juan García-Velasco - Chair Professor Garcia-Velasco is Chief Scientific Officer at IVIRMA Global and a Director of IVI Madrid, in addition to being a professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology at Rey Juan Carlos University, Madrid, and a Director of the Master's Degree program in Human Reproduction. He has more than 220 peer-reviewed articles and 31 book chapters on human reproduction published, alongside being an editor of Reproductive BioMedicine Online and Principal Investigator of projects funded by the Ministry of Education and Health of Spain. He has also received awards from the Spanish Fertility Society, Spanish Society of Gynecology and Obstetrics, and the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. Professor Baris Ata Professor Ata is an IVF Specialist at ART Fertility Clinics, Dubai, UAE, and a Professor-of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Koç University School of Medicine, Istanbul. He was an Executive Committee Member of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology and is the President of the Turkish Society of Reproductive Medicine. With more than 150 publications in leading journals and a member of editorial boards of renowned scientific journals, such as Human Reproduction Update, Human Reproduction, Reproductive BioMedicine Online among others. Baris is a trained clinical researcher and has a wealth of experience in the field of fertility and reproductive medicine. He holds multiple awards for research, education and clinical excellence from national and international institutions. Professor Shari Mackens Professor Mackens is Medical Director at Brussels IVF and a Clinical Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and has over 11 years of basic science research on endometrial receptivity and human embryo implantation, authoring 44 publications in peer-reviewed international journals and lectures, and is an Editor for Reproductive BioMedicine Online. Professor Scott Nelson Professor Nelson is Muirhead Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology at the University of Glasgow and a Consultant for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. He is also Medical Director of Access Fertility, Scientific Director of The Fertility Partnership and has authored over 227 scientific articles and book chapters. He has received grants from the National Institute of Health, the Medical Research Council, and Scottish Health Department, among others, and received awards from the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. Professor Georg Griesinger Professor Griesinger is Chair at the Department of Gynecological, Endocrinology and Reproductive Medicine at the University Hospital of Schleswig-Holstein, Luebeck, Germany and Professor at Luebeck University. He has been a Board member of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology since 2013 and a member of the WHO infertility guidelines group. He has authored more than 120 scientific articles, reviews and book contributions and has been the main author for Nolasiban (ObsEVA) publications and Editor of several national and international scientific journals. Professor Anja Pinborg Professor Pinborg is Medical Director and Professor at the Fertility Department at Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen University Hospital. She was an ESHRE Executive Committee member until 2021, in addition to previously being Chair of the Nordic Fertility Society. She is deputy editor of Human Reproduction Open. She has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed journals and ten book chapters and is the former Editor of Human Reproduction Update, Reproductive BioMedicine Online, and Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica. She is also Principal Investigator in the Reprounion collaboration and a member of the Steering Committee of CoNARTaS (Committee of Nordic ART and Safety). Professor Geoffrey Trew Professor Trew is Founder and Clinical Director of The Fertility Partnership Group, UK, and a Board Member of Fertility Associates, New Zealand's leading fertility provider. Graduating as a medical doctor from St Georges Hospital Medical School, UK, Geoffrey has been a consultant in reproductive medicine and surgery since 1995 and has worked at the Hammersmith Hospital and Queen Charlotte's Hospital for more than 20 years. An Honorary Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London, he has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers, over 20 book chapters and has received grants from the Welcome Trust, the National Institute for Health and Care Research and the Medical Research Council. Professor Jose Bellver Professor Bellver is attending gynecologist at IVI-RMA Valencia, Clinical Researcher at IVI Foundation and University Hospital la Fe, and an Associate Professor at the University of Valencia. He has published 258 original articles or book chapters, including 109 papers in international journals, edited 12 books regarding human reproduction, has been Scientific Editor in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, a member of several boards, and a reviewer of 22 journals focused on Obstetrics & Gynecology. Furthermore, he has been invited to more than 100 international lectures and participated in 170 oral/poster presentations in international and national congresses. About Oxolife Oxolife is a specialist biotech focused on enhancing embryo implantation in women undergoing Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) fertility treatment. Its lead compound OXO-001 is an easy to administer, non-hormonal, oral pill that boosts endometrial adhesion and invasion of the embryo, a major factor in improving pregnancy success rates. OXO-001 has completed phase 2 studies. Oxolife is currently fundraising to accelerate the progress of OXO-001 through the clinic and is also exploring potential partnerships to bring the benefits of OXO-001 to patients as rapidly as possible. With the global infertility market growing at 4.5% a year, due to later pregnancies, obesity, smoking and alcohol, 76m women a year are affected, with an expected market value of $41bn in 2026. SOURCE Oxolife

Researchers have created a robot capable of conducting experiments more efficiently and sustainably to develop a range of new semiconductor materials with desirable attributes. The researchers have already demonstrated that the new technology, called RoboMapper, can rapidly identify new perovskite materials with improved stability and solar cell efficiency. Researchers have created a robot capable of conducting experiments more efficiently and sustainably to develop a range of new semiconductor materials with desirable attributes. The researchers have already demonstrated that the new technology, called RoboMapper, can rapidly identify new perovskite materials with improved stability and solar cell efficiency. "RoboMapper allows us to conduct materials testing more quickly, while also reducing both cost and energy overhead -- making the entire process more sustainable," says Aram Amassian, corresponding author of a paper on the work and a professor of materials science and engineering at North Carolina State University. Conventional materials research requires a researcher to prepare a sample and then go through multiple steps to test each sample using different instruments. This involves placing, aligning and calibrating samples as needed to collect the data. Think of it as an assembly line that is both time consuming and requires a lot of electricity to power the relevant instruments. Previous efforts to automate this process have relied largely on automating the assembly line with one sample per chip moving through the entire data collection process. This improves speed, but each of the steps still has to be done with one sample at a time. "RoboMapper also automates this process, but places dozens of samples on each chip by miniaturizing the material samples with the help of modern printing," Amassian says. "It still performs each step of the data collection process, but it does so for multiple materials in parallel, saving time and energy." "This makes searching for new materials far more efficient, more cost effective, and more sustainable in terms of our carbon footprint," says Tonghui Wang, lead author of the paper and a Ph.D. student at NC State. "It's nearly 10 times faster than previous automated techniques." To confirm this, the team evaluated the environmental impact of traditional materials research and data collection and compared it with the RoboMapper. "It was remarkable to find that characterization is the major source of greenhouse gas emissions in materials research," says environmental economist Lucía Serrano-Luján, co-author of the paper and a researcher at Rey Juan Carlos University and the Technical University of Cartagena. "The RoboMapper's ability to streamline the data collection process by placing dozens of materials on the same chip reduced greenhouse gas emissions tenfold." To demonstrate the utility of RoboMapper, the researchers focused first on perovskite materials. Perovskites, which are defined by their crystalline structure, are better than silicon at absorbing light. That means perovskite solar cells can be thinner and lighter than silicon solar cells without sacrificing the cell's ability to convert light into electricity -- making them a focal point for research into next-generation solar technologies. Specifically, the researchers focused on perovskite stability, which is one of the biggest challenges in the field. "Basically, the challenge is that perovskite materials tend to degrade when exposed to light, losing the properties that made them desirable in the first place," Amassian says. "We're looking for ways to engineer these materials so that they are stable -- meaning they retain their desirable properties for a long time, even when exposed to light." And the researchers had their first significant finding with RoboMapper during the technology's proof-of-concept demonstration. The researchers tasked RoboMapper with making alloys using a defined set of elements. RoboMapper then made samples with 150 different alloy compositions and conducted optical spectroscopy and X-ray structural assessments and stability tests of those samples. RoboMapper's tests were designed to identify whether an alloy was suitable for tandem solar cells, meaning: whether it had the crystalline structure of a perovskite; whether it had a desirable set of optical characteristics, known as the band gap; and whether it was stable when exposed to intense light. This experimental data was then used to construct a computational model that identified a specific alloy composition that it predicted would have the best combination of desired attributes. The researchers then made the desired alloy with RoboMapper and by using conventional laboratory techniques, and tested both. "We are able to quickly identify the most stable composition from a possible set of perovskite alloys at a target band gap using the specific suite of elements we confined ourselves to for this proof-of-concept work," Amassian says. "The material we identified using RoboMapper also turned out to be more efficient at converting light into electricity in solar cell devices. Our conventional techniques validated the results from RoboMapper. "One reason RoboMapper's experiments were able to produce such useful data is that the specific suite of experiments we used is based on previous work that informs our understanding of the relationship between what we can observe in optical tests and the stability of perovskite materials. "Next steps for this work include expanding the range of potential alloys for testing in RoboMapper," Amassian says. "We're open to working with industry partners to identify new materials for photovoltaics or other applications. And with support from the Office of Naval Research, we are already using RoboMapper to advance our understanding of materials for both organic solar cells and printed electronics. The paper, "Sustainable Materials Acceleration Platform Reveals Stable and Efficient Wide Bandgap Metal Halide Perovskite Alloys," will be published July 25 in the journal Matter. Study co-authors include Hossein Ardekani and Robert Epps, former Ph.D. students at NC State; Jiantao Wang and Mahdi Ramezani, former postdoctoral researchers at NC State; Ryan Wilmington, Kasra Darabi and Boyu Guo, Ph.D. students at NC State; Mihirsinh Chauhan, a postdoctoral researcher at NC State; Dali Sun, an associate professor of physics at NC State; Milad Abolhasani, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NC State; Kenan Gundogdu, a professor of physics at NC State; and Ruipeng Li of Brookhaven National Laboratory. Ten of the paper's authors are part of the ORganic and Carbon Electronics Laboratories (ORaCEL) group at NC State, which is an interdisciplinary team of researchers focused on accelerating the development of new semiconductor materials for a wide range of applications. The work was done with assistance from Brookhaven National Laboratory and with support from the National Science Foundation, under grants 1936527 and 1741693; the Office of Naval Research, under grant number N00014-20-1-2573; the UNC Research Opportunities Initiative; and the State Research Agency (AEI), Government of Spain (grant number TED-2021-132368A-C22) and Ministry of Science and Innovation (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/FEDER, UE) under the grant PID2021-126605NB-I00.