International IVF Initiative Podcast

Talking Lab Air with with Dr Kathryn Worrilow

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Episode notes

Welcome to the latest episode of I3 with Giles Palmer in conversation with Dr Kathryn C. Worrilow who is the Founder and CEO, LifeAire Systems in what is a fascinating discussion abotu the developments within the lab environment and the time it has taken for these types of changes to be implemented.

What was discussed:

Kathryn talking about how she got into the world of embryology
Her previous work with co-culture
When she first saw the importance of air quality - literature to identify the relationship between air quality and the culture of the human embryo.
Realisation when leaving lab and saw that there of tarmac happening outside the lab and how it was linked to air quality in the lab
Started to monitor outside activity to see the drops in cellular and clinical outcomes.
2017 Cairo Consensus -discussing clean room concepts
Research launched once they knew the common VOC’s to look at how they are impacting the embryo
RBM online publication on the ‘mode’ of publication
Biggest threats to a lab
Important for embryologists to understand the toxic pathogens that are outside eg. off-gas equipment
Improvements on the Cairo consensus? Discussion of how much we’ve learnt since then
Which VOC’s are most common in IVF labs and where they come from, materials which should and shouldn’t be used
How their engineers work - look at ‘asbuilt drawings’ to start to find cubic volumes of air - they want to protect every molecule in that space
How covid impacted their business - who they could help

Make sure you keep an eye on the upcoming events at IVFMeeting.com for the follow up to this conversation