Egg rejuvenation enabled by the first therapeutic from Ovo Labs' breakthrough fertility platform, EmbryoProtect
EmbryoProtect will offer hope to millions of aspiring parents worldwide
Ovo Labs, the pioneering biotechnology company, has today publicly disclosed efficacy data for its lead therapeutic, EmbryoProtect 1 (EP1), at Fertility 2026, the UK’s largest fertility conference.
The data shows that EP1 can reverse poor egg quality when injected into a human egg obtained during the standard IVF process, marking a major milestone in reproductive medicine.
In a pre-clinical study which included over 100 human eggs from patients aged between 22 and 43, treatment with EmbryoProtect 1 increased the portion of viable eggs by more than half, from ~47% to ~71%. These results suggest that EmbryoProtect could represent the most significant advancement in IVF success rates in decades.
If translated to the bedside, the success of EmbryoProtect treatment could lead to an additional million babies being born through IVF each year worldwide.
IVF outcomes decline significantly with maternal age, as both the number and quality of available eggs diminish. By age 40, more than 70% of eggs are estimated to carry chromosomal abnormalities - known as aneuploidy - meaning many women in this age group may not produce a single healthy egg during an IVF cycle. Egg ageing is therefore the leading cause of infertility, miscarriage, and chromosomal conditions such as Down syndrome.
Prof. Melina Schuh, Director at the Max Planck Institute and Co-Founder of Ovo Labs said: “Women do not produce new eggs in adulthood and must instead rely on the limited reserve established before birth. Because eggs are some of the fastest-ageing cells in the human body, signs of egg ageing can already be detected in women in their early 30s. This accelerates even further by the time a woman reaches her 40s. With the age of aspiring parents continuing to increase worldwide and more people needing the help of IVF to conceive, this is already a worrying and stressful process. Couples often undergo several rounds of gruelling and invasive IVF without the odds of success improving.
“The initial results of our pre-clinical study, led by a Postdoctoral Scientist Dr Debojit Saha with support of Dr Saba Manshaei (now Head of Development at Ovo Labs), show that EmbryoProtect can intervene to successfully reverse damage caused by ageing which would make IVF more effective for all couples, but particularly in women of advanced reproductive age. While egg rejuvenation has been successfully carried out in model organisms before, this is the first time it’s been undertaken using human eggs in vitro.”
Dr Agata Zielinska, Ovo Labs co-CEO added: “We’ve been hugely encouraged by the results from this study and the next step would be to complete the required safety and toxicity studies in-house at our fully-established research facility to enable the first clinical trials. We would then be able to bring EmbryoProtect to patients, effectively extending the female reproductive age span.”
Prof. Antonio Pellicer, founder of IVI RMA, the world’s largest IVF clinic chain, a globally-recognized leader in reproductive clinical research said: “For decades, we have understood that poor egg quality is the main reason IVF often fails – especially in women over 35 – but we have had no way to address this. What Ovo Labs is doing with EmbryoProtect is scientifically grounded and could not be more clinically relevant. If validated in clinical trials, it has the potential to deliver the biggest improvement in IVF success rates we have seen in decades”.
Founded in 2025 by Melina Schuh, Agata Zielinska and Oleksandr Yagensky, Ovo Labs’ mission is to transform infertility treatment through therapeutics that restore and enhance the quality of human eggs.
Ovo Labs builds on over two decades of pioneering research from the laboratory of Prof. Melina Schuh, whose team was the first to track in real time how human eggs eliminate half of their genetic material prior to being fertilized - work that revealed not only the mechanisms of egg errors but also how to correct them. To date, Schuh’s research group has carried out meticulous analysis of eggs from more than 1,000 women going through IVF worldwide with the results being frequently published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals including Science, Cell and Nature. Professor Schuh is a Co-Founder of and advisor to Ovo Labs, who now advance the multiple assets within the EmbryoProtect therapeutic pipeline towards the clinic.