Last Updated on Tuesday, 8 March, 2022 at 12:45 pm by Andre Camilleri
The company uses artificial intelligence and lab-on-a-chip technology to help aspirational parents by assisting fertility clinics reduce their standard 70% treatment failure rate.
The company has announced the start of research and development of an AI-powered sperm and egg selection technology for fertility treatments.
The research and development places Malta at the centre of what is an international collaboration, with a Malta-based team of experts in reproductive health, deep-learning and microfluidics, teaming up with Pera Labs’s commercialization advisors at the University City Science Center in Philadelphia and Wainamics – Pera Labs’s award winning manufacturing partner in California, US and Austria.
Pera Labs’s Malta operations are accelerated by the €800,000 of financial support from Malta Enterprise, coupled with Pera Labs’s own financing.
Founder and CEO, Burak Özkösem, a longtime Ph.D. researcher of reproductive health said that: “We chose Malta as our European headquarters not only because it’s sunny most of the year but also its’ genuine hospitality towards cutting edge tech companies from US, Canada, Israel and beyond. This financial and logistic support demonstrate strong innovative vision as a country. Our Malta base will be our headquarters for EU related CE Mark and GDPR compliance and regulatory affairs. With English being the official language, Malta has created an international startup friendly sandbox for companies’ growth and soft landing in Europe. My experiences with the Malta Enterprise team from the application to due diligence and selection processes to project implementation phase have been very friendly and everybody has been very considering that our move began right in the middle of Covid-19 pandemic.”
“Our global expansion began with a major step, which was choosing Malta as our R&D facilities for developing AI-powered fertility treatment solutions to European couples and more. We are building the world’s first and only fully automated device that not only analyzes sperm quality but also selects the best sperm cells for fertility treatments. This patent pending technology called SPERMAN® unlike other systems, doesn’t harm sperm or egg cells during the analysis and separation processes. Moreover, our technology is safe and tackles the fertility issues in men and women pre-conception stage therefore not harming embryos at all.”
Kurt Farrugia, Malta Enterprise’s CEO on news of the announcement said, “Pera Lab’s pioneering technology for reproductive health has the potential to dramatically increase the success of fertility treatments and drive down their costs. We are looking forward for this highly-innovative company to join our growing local med-tech ecosystem and its developments to change lives in fertility clinics around the world.”
About Pera Labs
At Pera Labs, we are pioneering a reproductive health revolution through our AI-powered lab-on-a-chip platform of sperm-based technologies. We began with a vision to reimagine global reproductive health and help all people create the healthy family they dream of – when they are ready. Today, we believe our unprecedented understanding of sperm biology coupled with our pioneering research will turn our vision into a reality. Through our platform, we are focused on fundamental components of reproductive health: fertility, pregnancy complications, inherited disease, developmental disorders, and non-hormonal contraception. By advancing research in fertility treatments, new technologies to reduce pregnancy complications, disease transmission, and developmental disorders, and enabling non-hormonal contraception, Pera Labs is dedicated to becoming a leader in reproductive health and offering life-changing options for people. Pera Labs was founded in 2019 by Burak Özkösem, PhD in Philadelphia, US has European headquarters in Malta. For more information, please visit https://peralabs.co.
About SPERMAN
Using microfluidic chip technology, deep-learning algorithms and polarized optics, this technology streamlines the sperm selection process. Compared to others, the quality analysis is at single cell level, 5X faster, 2X more accurate, and sperm DNA Integrity is also assessed automatically without harming the sperm cell or function. It provides standardized, rapid and highly accurate sperm selection, therefore, shortens the fertility treatment times, lowers capital costs, and increases patient volume for the fertility clinics. Meanwhile, couples would need less IVF cycles to have a healthy child saving them minimum €28,000 from fertility treatment costs.
