Today's top line: Two doctors are turning a Costco into Newfoundland's first fertility clinic. We look at who's building, who's funding and what's actually moving the industry forward.
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Happy Friday. This is The Buzz, your five-minute briefing on fertility news you should know. We dig up the stories that matter, and not just the ones that broke today. Tuesdays: science, policy and patients. Fridays: the business side. Let's get into it.
NEW CLINIC ALERT
Newfoundland is finally getting its own IVF clinic
Two St. John's fertility specialists are building a private IVF clinic in an old Costco building. Dr. Deanna Murphy and Dr. Sean Murphy say plans are "well underway" and they expect to open later this year.
Why it matters: NL is one of just two provinces (along with PEI) without an IVF clinic. Right now, patients do five weeks of monitoring locally, then fly to Ontario or Alberta for the actual transfer. Between 2021 and 2025, 230 patients had used the provincial travel subsidy, costing $2.1 million. NL's Budget 2025 put $3.2 million toward fertility expansion and bumped the IVF subsidy to a one-time $20,000.
Dr. Deanna Murphy says the clinic won't just serve fertility patients. Egg retrieval and freezing could support transgender individuals, same-sex couples, cancer patients and anyone looking to preserve their options.
Bottom line: Patients have been flying out of province for years. Now the infrastructure is coming to them. If it works, PEI becomes the last province without a clinic.
THE BIG RAISE
A robot that builds embryos just raised $70M
Conceivable Life Sciences has built AURA — a 17-foot, 4,500-pound robotic assembly line that can do every step of the IVF lab process, from dish prep to ICSI to vitrification. It's the only machine in the world that does the full sequence.
The company raised $70M total ($50M Series A last September, led by Advance Venture Partners). AURA is now running a 100-patient study at a clinic in Mexico City. Previous pilot saw 21 pregnancies, with a blastocyst rate (51%) on par with top-performing human labs. US launch targeted for this year.
Here’s their dream: 2,000 IVF cycles a year with only three staff.
Why it matters: 80% of infertile couples in the US go untreated. The bottleneck isn't demand — it's lab capacity, skilled hands and inconsistent outcomes. AURA is betting they are the future. We’ll follow this one closely.
THE BUZZ BOARD
Florida embryo mix-up update: a court ordered genetic testing for every baby born at the clinic over five years. The industry is still largely self-regulated. Sleep well!
Kiara Health launched this week — an AI co-pilot that builds 90-day preconception plans for both partners. Marketplace partners include Tiny Health, Evvy, Mira and Legacy.
Inito raised $29M to scale at-home fertility hormone testing. Total funding: $45M. Now expanding beyond ovulation into broader diagnostics using AI-designed antibodies.
INVO Fertility locked down a US patent for its modified INVOcell device, which lets fertilization happen inside the body instead of a lab. IP protection through 2040.
Pulsenmore and Clalit launched the first at-home ultrasound for IVF follicle monitoring in Israel. $4.5M deal. If it works, fewer clinic visits during stim cycles.
CFAS Annual Conference: Calgary, September 17-19.
NUMBER OF THE WEEK
200+
The number of manual steps involved in creating an IVF embryo, according to Conceivable (the company behind AURA). Their robot wants to do all of them.
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— Violet @ The Buzz 🐝