A wearable device to make fertility treatment easier is being developed by a Melbourne startup in partnership with RMIT, the University of Melbourne and Monash IVF.
To give people the best chance at conception using IVF, clinicians track hormone levels to ensure egg collection and embryo transfers are optimally timed.
Currently, this requires multiple blood draws at a laboratory during certain stages of their menstrual cycle.
However, if testing falls on a weekend or any time labs may be closed, IVF providers are forced to choose a less optimal testing time, potentially affecting treatment precision.
A sensor solution
Building upon groundbreaking research conducted by Professor Sharath Sriram and team at RMIT University, Symex Labs is now leading further development of a wearable sensor that can detect the relevant hormones – progesterone and oestradiol – in a person's skin.
Symex Labs – headed by co-founders Edgar Charry and Muhammad Umer, whose partners have lived experience of infertility – is responsible for the engineering, design and clinical validation required to translate the original research platform into a wearable medical device.
This opens the door to a sensor patch that will allow simple, pain-free hormone monitoring outside the lab for the tens of thousands of women in Australia who undergo IVF treatment each year.
"Our biosensor will eventually be worn as a patch that works by penetrating the skin using microscopic microneedles to access hormones present in the patient's interstitial fluid," Charry said.
"These hormones will bind to receptors on the sensor surface, producing an electrical signal proportional to hormone concentration. The technology then translates the electrical activity to hormone levels, ultimately informing the IVF clinical team if the patient is ready for embryo transfer."
"These data will be sent directly to the clinic's monitoring system, allowing IVF nurses to review the results and advise the patient," he explained.
Monash IVF Research Director, Associate Professor Mark Green said the investment in Symex Labs aligns with Monash IVF's focus on innovation and improving the patient journey.
"This technology will save patients time and money as they can conveniently wear the patch in the comfort of their own home, resulting in fewer visits to the clinic and fewer painful injections," Green said.
"The biosensor would also be a gamechanger for women living in regional areas, who often have to travel long distances for blood draws."
Because hormone concentrations in interstitial fluid have not yet been fully characterised, Symex Labs is conducting a world-first clinical study at Monash IVF to establish baseline levels by benchmarking them against concentrations measured in blood samples.
Symex co-founder Muhammad Umer said the hormone tracking technology also had wider clinical applications beyond IVF.
"Our wearable hormone biosensor has strong potential well beyond fertility care, particularly in the management of polycystic ovary syndrome, perimenopause and menopause, where continuous hormone insight can replace today's indirect, symptom-based tracking," he said.
"By integrating directly with consumer health apps, the technology can enable personalised, data-driven management of chronic hormonal conditions and life-stage transitions that currently lack real-time biomarkers."
"For example, if a woman's oestrogen is going up and down constantly, that's often a sign that she is getting into that stage, so having access to this health information could help women implement lifestyle changes earlier," Umer said.
Collaborating to boost commercialisation
The Symex product development has received $2.5 million in funding from the Federal Government, the University of Melbourne's Genesis Pre-Seed Fund, Monash IVF, RMIT and Breakthrough Victoria, through its $100 million University Innovation Platform (UIP) initiative.
Breakthrough Victoria's UIP initiative supports the commercialisation of critical research with real-world benefits from eight Victorian universities and plays a pivotal in transforming the Victorian economy by investing in locally produced IP.
This is the first co-investment by RMIT under the UIP initiative and Breakthrough Victoria CEO Rod Bristow said it was exciting to see the partnership bearing fruit.
"It is great to see RMIT's technology being commercialised by a Victorian startup," he said.
"Partnerships like this represent a valuable pathway to ensure the quality research being conducted within Victoria is successfully commercialised."
Since the UIP launched in 2023, more than 40 startups and social impact ventures have been backed by Victorian universities, allowing them to test, refine and scale their ideas to turn their research into companies and social enterprises ready for investment.
The sensor research itself commenced at RMIT in 2018 and has been supported with over $4 million in research funding.
The technology is also being used for a range of other applications such as detecting risk of heart failure, monitoring for chronic kidney disease, looking at inflammatory biomarkers for skin and muscle health, stress and emotional response, monitoring airborne viruses and pathogens, and very early-stage cancer screening.
RMIT Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research and Innovation Distinguished Professor Calum Drummond AO said the game-changing platform technology was an example of the impact-focused research RMIT is committed to.
"Taking excellent foundational work like this and supporting it to make a real difference to potentially thousands of people is where collaboration becomes a key ingredient to creating research impact beyond academia," Drummond said.
The first in-human pilot study for the hormone sensor is expected to get underway within the next 18 months, with commercialisation plans slated for early 2028.
