Ferring and Roche to create personalised infertility treatment

Ferring has announced a collaboration with Roche that will focus on a new method of personalising infertility treatments to a woman's specific needs.

The project will combine diagnostic testing technology from Roche with Ferring's human cell line-derived recombinant follicle-stimulating hormone, a gonadotrophin therapy that is currently in phase III development.

Both companies will work together on the global phase III programme to qualify, validate, document and seek regulatory approval for a companion diagnostic test to be used in combination with Ferring's hormone therapy.

Roche's fully-automated Elecsys AMH assay works by assessing anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH) levels, a measure of a woman's ovarian reserve and also of her ovarian response to infertility treatment with gonadotrophin. It works in less than 20 minutes, whereas manual methods can take hours.

Dr Pascal Danglas, executive vice-president for clinical and product development at Ferring, said: "The ability to tailor a specific dose of gonadotrophin based on a woman's personal AMH level would represent a major step forward in fertility management."

This comes after the company allied with the European Federation of Crohn's and Ulcerative Colitis Associations last month to develop and launch Guts4Life, an interactive online resource for people affected by inflammatory bowel disease.