With the development of the cumulus aided transfer (CAT) technique, Dr Firuza Parikh, director, department of assisted reproduction and genetics at Bombay’s Jaslok Hospital and Reserch Centre and her team has brought new hope to couples who have been unable to conceive even with in-vitro fertilization (IVF). This "path-breaking process gives a gentle twist to the assisted reproduction technique...by using wispy, cloud-like clumps of cumulus cells (which) surround the egg at ovulation, but are later discarded as waste,” notes a report in The Indian Express of January 28, 2005. As in IVF the woman’s eggs are fertilized outside the body under laboratory conditions. In the new method however, when transferring the embryos into the uterus, under the CAT technique, the droplets of surrounding cumulus cells are also included. The cumulus cells of the patients are allowed to grow in the laboratory for around three days prior to that.
Parikh: path-breaking discovery
Initially the team selected 50 of the 100 women for this CAT technique, many of whom had failed IVF attempts earlier. Of these 50, 25 women or 50 percent got pregnant. But in the control group the success was only 36 percent. The results as reported in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of India (November-December 2004) reflect a "trend toward higher pregnancy rates.” Keen to try this process on 400-500 more patients, Parikh conveyed, "I don’t want to patent the technique, but to teach it to as many doctors as possible.”
A casual conversation between Firuza and her husband Rajesh, a neuro-psychiatrist at Jaslok Hospital had resulted in this breakthrough, revealed Firuza. "We were discussing general needs and wants in life and I suddenly wondered if I was wasting something in my laboratory.” Thus she started probing the cumulus cells to see if they would contribute to conception.
Parikh’s stem cell research had earlier earned her international recognition (see "Cel(l)ebrity status,” Parsiana, November 2001).