Call to create national research embryo bank at PET Annual Conference

Researchers called for the law to be interpreted in a way that would make it easier for IVF patients to donate their unused embryos for general research, at the 2023 PET (Progress Educational Trust) Annual Conference.

Currently, patients can consent to donate their embryos to specific research projects but not to embryo research in general. Professor Kathy Niakan, professor of reproductive physiology at the University of Cambridge, told the conference that this is due to the way that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has interpreted the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act within the HFEA Code of Practice.

Figures obtained by the Guardian newspaper from the HFEA show that whereas 17,925 embryos were donated to research in the UK in 2004, only 675 embryos – less than 4 percent of the previous figure – were donated in 2019.

'There are tens of thousands of good quality embryos that are no longer needed by patients which could be incredibly valuable for research,' Professor Niakan told the Guardian. 'Unfortunately, very few clinics offer the option to donate.'

'Some [patients] had to go through counselling because it's taken so long for them to be able to fulfil their wishes to donate to research. Some of them have paid extra storage fees just to give time for the whole process and all the paperwork to go through. They shouldn't be put in that position. Somebody needs to step in and make it a lot easier.'

Just one in five clinics recruited embryo donors for research in 2016, HFEA statistics showed, meaning that donated embryos are coming from a small number of clinics. This situation contributed to just 0.6 percent of embryos created being used for research, despite 50 percent of respondents to a 2017 HFEA survey saying that they were comfortable to consent for any approved research project, Professor Niakan explained at the PET conference.

Consequently, UK fertility patients who wish to donate unused embryos often have to go to considerable lengths to identify research projects to which they can make a donation, and then find a way to try to get the embryos to the researchers. Many patients who wish to donate their unused embryos are simply unable to do so.

Sarah Norcross, director of PET and chair of the conference, told the Guardian: 'The sheer waste of human embryos that are being allowed to perish effectively by default, when researchers could learn so much from this precious resource, is a scandal. It is also deeply imprudent and shortsighted, when one considers that IVF owes its very existence to embryo research, and that private companies have benefited – and continue to benefit – from that pioneering work.'

Professor Niakan said changes should be made enabling patients to give broad consent for the use of embryos in research. This would allow for the creation of an embryo bank that could be accessed by researchers, rather than having to liaise directly with fertility clinics.

An HFEA spokesperson told the Guardian: 'We have recently made recommendations to Government for changes to the law so that patients could donate embryos to a research embryo bank that could then allocate stored embryos to suitable research when needed' (see BioNews 1216).