Licensing opportunity
The Centre for Reproductive Biology at Edinburgh University, Scotland, is looking for partners to co-develop or license biomarkers that detect ectopic or extra-uterine pregnancies during the first three months of pregnancy.
Ectopic pregnancies occur when the fertilised egg is implanted outside of the uterine wall in tissues such as the cervix, ovaries or abdomen. Extra-uterine implantation leads to non-viable pregnancies, and affect 12,000 women in the UK each year.
These conditions are difficult to diagnose as no reliable test can distinguish ectopic from healthy pregnancies at an early stage. It is estimated that in 20 per cent of extra-uterine cases it takes five medical consultations before the condition is diagnosed.
Edinburgh’s biomarkers, which are detected in pregnant women’s blood, allow for early diagnosis of ectopic pregnancy and entail much less physiological and psychological trauma than late detection.
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