A few days ago myself and Noor Siddiqui, Founder & CEO of Orchid, visited a real IVF clinic to learn more about the process of IVF and Orchid’s whole genome embryo report.

This episode, and Orchid, are particularly interesting to me because I was born via IVF ICSI, which is the exact process we filmed the clinic’s staff performing.

A preventive approach to genetic diseases

One of the first questions I asked Noor while we were driving to the Marin Fertility Center, who were gracious enough to film with us, was what inspired her to work on Orchid.

She explained her mom developed a rare disease known as retinitis pigmentosa. This caught me off guard because I had heard of the disease before, in fact we have a whole section about it in the first episode of our bio blackout we did with Octant Bio a few weeks back.

Octant’s approach for dealing with the disease is post-diagnosis, their approach for greater therapy discovery is incredibly exciitng, but what if you could also prevent diseases and mutations before they happen? That’s what Orchid is aiming to help parents and doctors achieve.

100x the data via Orchid’s report

Today, parents can already expect some predictability in certain diseases, but Orchid’s whole genome report increases the breadth of genetic risk assessment on the order of 100x. Examining over 1200 monogenic conditions, Orchid’s report is a significant enhancement compared to conventional methods, which typically assess a much narrower spectrum of genetic risks.

This helps parents and mitigate risks for thousands of diseases that couldn't be detected in embryos before. Orchid’s test can identify an embryo’s birth defects, chromosomal abnormalities, neurodevelopmental disorders, and pediatric and adult-onset cancers.

The process for patients is simple:

• Go to an Orchid partnered IVF clinic and sign up for Orchid’s report

• Undergo standard procedures for egg and sperm collection

• After ~5 days the clinic will send a few cells to Orchid’s lab

• Orchid runs their proprietary bioinformatics and analysis on the cells

• Parents receive an easy to read and in depth whole genome report on their embryos

• Parents can choose which embryo to transfer with an unprecedented level of data

You can think of Orchid’s level of data as running spell check on an entire book versus just the table of contents, which is how embryonic health screening is done today.

Negating risk, creating new life

Time to get a little personal, the below image is me before I was even me.

For many years my parents tried and tried to have a kid, without getting into too much detail they were unsuccessful and it was very disheartening. At the time, advanced reproductive health technology, IVF, was their only hope of having a kid and that wasn’t working either. IVF ICSCI, or Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection, was an even more cutting edge, almost experimental kind of IVF that could allow them to fulfill their dreams of parenthood.

IVF ICSI is more like a precise matchmaking service. Here, a single sperm is picked and directly injected into the egg. It's a tailored approach, used when the odds of natural meeting and compatibility are low.

Well, it worked and almost 24 years later I’m a healthy and happy adult today, only because my parents decided to try a new reproductive health technology.

Sometimes, it’s hard to see and understand how cutting edge technology can drastically impact lives. It’s easy to watch a bio focused episode of S³ and think “sure that’s cool,” but unless you’ve felt the effects of that technology on one’s life it’s hard to relate to it.

Orchid is one of these breakthrough reproductive technologies that can save parents and family from the heartache, pain, and cost of having children with majorly untreatable diseases.

As an IVF baby myself, I’m very thankful reproductive health researchers, clinicians, doctors, and companies like Orchid are building the future to be better and healthier than ever before.

Keep on building the future,

— Jason

Filmed at Marin Fertility Center in Marin, CA | Edited in Vacaville, CA | Composed in Davis, CA