Sydney’s JumpStart Fertility is tackling the greatest global challenge in assisted reproduction: age. A $4 million cash injection from Proto Axiom is facilitating human trials and ultimately, FDA approval for the homegrown innovation.
It’s a big, global problem, and one with no easy answers or solutions. Less women are having children, and those who are, are doing it later in life.
“Falling birth-rates are no longer a demographic footnote; two-thirds of OECD countries already sit below replacement, and by 2050 most of the world will be in the same boat,” says Anthony Liveris, CEO of US/Australian biotech investor Proto Axiom.
Australia hasn’t had parity in replacing its dying citizens with new births since the 1970s, according to government statistics. Innovation out of UNSW and the University of Queensland is striving to change the dynamic for women looking to have children, even if they are undergoing IVF at an ‘advanced biological age.’
“Age-driven egg decline is the choke-point,” Liveris tells Forbes Australia.
He oversaw Proto Axiom’s $4 million investment into Sydney-headquartered firm JumpStart Fertility this year. The biotech was founded at UNSW by IVF specialists Dr Lindsay Wu and Professor Hayden Homer.
“JumpStart Fertility tackles it where biology breaks down—inside the IVF lab—by adding a patented NAD⁺-boosting compound to standard embryo-culture media in pre-clinical work. That lifts blastocyst-formation rates by more than 60 per cent, meaning fewer rounds and lower out-of-pocket costs for older patients,” says Liveris.
The ‘age/IVF’ conundrum is a biological and societal challenge that Dr Wu has dedicated his career to.
“There is currently nothing we can do to improve oocyte quality during ageing- IVF is pretty poor, with a success rate of around 30% per IVF cycle in younger patients, dropping to just 4% in women aged 40-44. We hope that this will be the first targeted intervention to overcome the biology of ageing in IVF,” Wu tells Forbes Australia.
Australia’s total fertility rate reached its lowest level on record in 2023, according to the Australian Institute of Family Studies. These days, Australian women aged 30-34 are having the most babies, overtaking women aged 25-29. There has also been a steady rise in the number of women aged 35-39 having kids.
That delay, while understandable for lifestyle and societal reasons, can present challenges biologically.
“Unlike every other cell in the body, the reserve of oocytes (egg cells) are not replaced throughout life, meaning that oocytes must last in the ovary for decades from birth until their ovulation. As a result, in vitro fertilisation (IVF) success rates sharply decline from age 35 onwards,” research from Jumpstart Fertility states.
“This inherent biological injustice is a key contributor to gender inequality in society, with many women delaying parenthood until they have achieved educational, career and economic goals, with this timing often overlapping precisely with the start of the decline in natural fertility,” says Wu.
“As a result, birth rates around the world are plummeting, with every continent except Africa facing birth rates that are well below replacement levels,” says Wu.
Innovating IVF protocols
JumpStart’s solution tackles the ‘broth’ that IVF oocytes are grown in.
“Fertility demand is rising, yet culture media have barely changed in decades. JumpStart’s science addresses a clear clinical gap and opens a diversified fertility pipeline,” ProtoAxiom states.
“We spent several years running a medicinal chemistry program to develop new, potent, stable compounds that can be used to restore oocyte quality,” says Wu. “Our solution is to improve the efficiency of existing IVF protocols, specifically the proportion of oocytes that fertilise and develop into mature embryos called blastocysts, which can be transferred to patients for a pregnancy.”
JumpStart research shows a 60 per cent improvement in the success rates of embryos when using the new protocols. The injection of cash from the recent fundraise will finance human trials, and if successful, put the innovation on the path to FDA approval.
The cost of IVF conception
Fewer rounds of IVF means lower costs to patients both financially and emotionally, Wu explains.
“IVF is highly invasive, requiring dozens of hormonal injections to induce superovulation, expensive, and due to its high per-cycle failure rate, is emotionally devastating to couples,” says Wu. “IVF requires, on average, 2.6 cycles to achieve a single live birth: this number is vastly higher in older age groups, and excludes patients who never achieve live birth despite repeated IVF cycles.”
“Birth rates around the world are plummeting, with every continent except Africa facing birth rates that are well below replacement levels.”
Dr Lindsay Wu
While IVF is subsidised in Australia, it is not in most other countries.
“Each IVF cycle in the US is around $23k, with over half of all US patients paying entirely out of pocket,” says Wu.
JumpStart’s unique approach to improving IVF outcomes could change the game for women all over the world.
“Our goal is to directly the address the biology of oocyte ageing, extending the fertility window, and improving IVF success rates so that patients do not have to suffer the heartache and cost of repeated IVF cycles,” says Wu.
These are the types of problems that unique biotech incubator/investor Proto Axiom is working to alleviate.
“Proto Axiom’s mandate is to build breakthrough science here in Australia and then scale it globally,” says Liveris. “JumpStart is a textbook example: local innovation aimed at a problem that’s universal.”
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