BEST PROVIDERS OF SPECIALIST CARE
FERTILITY SERVICE PROVIDER OF THE YEAR IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC AND EXCELLENCE IN FERTILITY TECHNOLOGY IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC
ALPHA IVF GROUP
Just days before it received two Global Health Asia-Pacific awards , Kuala Lumpur-based Alpha IVF Group had celebrated another world ’ s first in fertility .
Already behind more than a dozen globally recognised breakthroughs , Alpha IVF ’ s team of fertility specialists and embryologists made history in November by producing the world ’ s first baby to be born from an embryo selected using high-resolution HLA typing . The technique enables one sibling ’ s bone marrow to be a complete match for another .
The so-called saviour sibling will eventually donate its marrow to save the life of its older sibling , who suffers from beta thalassemia major , an incurable blood disease . Until this pioneering delivery , there had been at best only an 80 percent chance that the marrow in the two children would match , using less precise typing techniques .
The news capped a standout week for Alpha who celebrated its awards and the first anniversary of its new clinic in Singapore .
“ We are happy that a homegrown Malaysian brand has gone overseas and successfully set up a centre that not only looks beautiful in terms of its design , but within just a year has established pregnancy rates that have never before been seen in the history of Singapore ,” Dr Colin Lee , Alpha ’ s founder and one of Malaysia ’ s most prominent fertility pioneers , said on accepting the awards for Fertility
Dato ’ Dr Colin and team
Dr Ng Peng Wah
Dr Tan Heng Hao
Service Provider of the Year in the Asia-Pacific and Excellence in Fertility Technology in the Asia-Pacific .
Since it opened a year ago , Alpha ’ s clinic in Singapore has achieved pregnancy rates through frozen blastocyst transfer at slightly under 80 percent , which is in line with success rates at its Kuala Lumpur centre , which opened in 2011 .
The last year has also been a successful one for its Penang clinic , Genesis IVF . Having opened in 2017 , Alpha ’ s northern Malaysian property has gained “ significant attention ” from Indonesian patients in particular “ with cost-efficient IVF product offerings coupled with the attractiveness of Penang as a medical tourism city with Unesco heritage status ,” said Dr Lee . “ Also , the IVF success rates at Genesis stand at over 70 percent , which is a testament to the effective advanced technologies deployed there .”
The fertility specialist attributes Alpha ’ s success to the skills of his team and the clinic ’ s voracious acquisition of the most advanced fertility technology available .
These include access to preimplantation genetic testing using next-generation sequencing , which can assess the genetics of an embryo in multiple ways at the same time . It also increases success rates and reduces the risk of genetic mutations that might affect newborns . Doctors can call on a time-lapse embryoscope , which constantly monitors embryo development by taking pictures at fixed intervals to ensure the best quality embryos . To preserve the embryos until implantation , they are frozen with Cryotec freezing equipment , which ensures all the embryos survive the thawing process and can be implanted .
“ Technology is very important , but there are two parts to it : one is the hardware , and the other one is the expertise of the people who use it . In addition , we have collaborations from all over the world in the field of IVF , and at the moment , we are working with a few of the world ’ s top IVF centres on multi-centre studies into artificial intelligence and certain new areas involving genomics in the field of IVF ,” said Dr Lee . “ So it ’ s not just about the technology we have , but how we make use of it and how we apply it .”
52 DECEMBER 2020 GlobalHealthAsiaPacific . com