Another solution is simply to delay the aging of the oocytes!

Unfortunately, this solution lies at the intersection of two fields that have traditionally not shown great success. We do not have any approved aging drug and women's health's approvals are the smallest %!

Researchers are pushing boundaries by using proteins (transcription factors) to steer egg development in culture. In 2024, a Harvard team achieved the first induction of human meiosis in vitro, marking a significant leap.

Below progression of stages of meiosis over time

But the big prize companies like Conception and ovelle.bio are after is creating not just ovarian support cells from stem cells, but actual eggs, something that has been achieved in mice.

The opportunities would then be limitless!

In vitro maturation is not a faraway dream. Gameto has started trials to quantify IVM’s ability to rescue those immature eggs that would be discarded in standard IVF. Last December, Gameto announced the birth of the first baby using their IVM Fertilo platform

IVM collects immature eggs, cutting the need for lengthy, high-dose hormonal treatment. It uses just 3 days of low-dose FSH versus 12 days for mature eggs, reducing pain, nausea, and ovarian hyperstimulation risks, and saves about 20–30% on fertility drug costs.

Companies such as Gameto are working to differentiate iPSCs into ovarian support cells and recreate an ovary in a dish. This would allow doctors to collect immature eggs & induce them to mature in vitro by placing them in the environment of this ‘artificial ovary’.

But there are even better tools we have in our arsenal, and they all derive more or less indirectly from a molecular biology technique that won the Nobel Prize in 2012: the production of iPSCs (induced pluripotent stem cells)

However, a number of media reports have been less sanguine about egg freezing. The same NYU Langone study was used as the basis for an article titled ‘The failed promise of egg freezing’, which cites a 39 percent success rate for the procedure.

And here lies the catch: We can help women have it all if we figure out how to technologically:

a) preserve eggs better, cost effectively and efficiently
b) delay their aging in the first place
c) create new eggs from stem cells

Science will be our friend here

Reproductive aging in women stems primarily from egg aging. As women age, their chances of conceiving through IVF using their own eggs decreases significantly, but when they use eggs from younger donors, their success rates fall very little.

It might come as a surprise to many to hear that the oldest mother on record was 73. The catch: she was not using her own eggs but a younger donor’s. With in vitro fertilization (usually known as IVF), eggs are collected, fertilized in a laboratory, and then implanted in a womb.

The chance of conceiving a baby naturally with regular sex drops from 25 percent per month in one’s twenties to about five percent per month at 40, while the chance of miscarrying rises from about eight percent for women under 30 to around one in three for 40-year-olds.

Highly educated women attempt to catch up during their 30s, with their birth rates increasing more rapidly. However, this compensatory period is limited, as fertility rates across all education levels tend to plateau around age 39. Thus, the educated group ends up with less kids.

Executives and mangers have particularly greedy jobs. A study found that while at the start of their careers women and men work ~ the same hrs, 9 yrs after women reduce working hrs a lot with huge implications for long term earnings

In this piece, I lay out how a large part of the "gender pay gap" is just this: a motherhood pay gap. And, as Nobel Laureate Claudia Goldin points out, this is particularly true in high-stakes or "greedy" careers like business, law, medicine, entrepreneurship and so on.

I can post selfies here without feeling cringe

Has this person lived in the real world ? 😭

Countries that use “recriprocal kinship” (mother calling her kid “mom”).

To be clear, in Romania this can only be done in a specific noun case (vocative), which is used to address ppl. Eg “please mom, do this”