Biotech start-up Orchid is one of the few companies offering in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) patients the option to screen their embryos for severe genetic diseases before their pregnancy begins.
“This technology is going to totally reshape how people have children,” Orchid’s CEO Noor Siddiqui told CNBC’s The Edge in an interview.
“I think it’s going to become an option that more and more people will choose because there’s just the opportunity to avoid a lot of catastrophic outcomes, and they don’t want to roll the dice on their child’s health,” Siddiqui added.
During IVF, a woman takes fertility hormones to suppress her natural menstrual cycle and increase the number of eggs in her ovaries. Once her eggs are collected, they are mixed with the sperm and fertilized in a lab. The viable embryos are then transferred to the uterus.
Siddiqui says that Orchid has developed a new technology that sequences 99% of an embryo’s entire genome before implantation in the womb and screens for over 1,200 monogenic conditions, as well as some polygenic diseases.
