Vitro Safe wins award for IVF contamination control innovation
Vitro Safe Systems, which has developed a system to protect embryos during IVF, has won an Innovation Award at this year’s Business for Life Awards.
The Business for Life Awards, hosted by Cels, celebrate excellence in the UK North East’s healthcare industry and include prizes for outstanding growth, partnership with the NHS, best export and start-up and best innovation.
Vitro Safe Systems, based at Newcastle University, won the Innovation Award for its set of interlinked workstations designed to provide comprehensive environmental and process control during laboratory processing of embryos and stem cells.
The development was driven by the implementation of Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) and was led by Dr Mary Herbert (Scientific Director, Newcastle Fertility Centre). Preliminary clinical data from Newcastle Fertility Centre indicate that the Vitrosafe system promotes increased embryo viability and pregnancy rates.
Vitro Safe Systems aims to supply the technology to the growing IVF and Stem Cell markets that are currently undertaking major programmes of capital investment to comply with GMP standards.
Following the launch of the Vitrosafe system at an international conference in July 2008, the company has started working with three large European IVF centres and anticipate orders to the value of over £3 million in 2009.
Contact
enquiries@vitrosafe.com