Non Invasive Chromosomal Screening (NICS) :
BAUFICI LAB IS FIRST IN THE COUNTRY TO START WITH THE NON INVASIVE PGTA TESTING
Standard Invasive trophectoderm embryo biopsy with PGTa has some risks of damaging the embryo. They are costly, needs advance equipment’s such as lasers, micromanipulators and also need skilled embryologist to carry out the biopsy. These problems can be completely avoided using NICS, in which the DNA that has leaked into the spent culture media from the droplet where the Blastocyst is growing, expanding and hatching on day 5/day 6, is amplified and then tested by NGS. This test can be an alternative to the embryo biopsy test of PGTa. The NICS is less accurate (70 – 85 % concordance rate) compared to standard embryo biopsy as far as diagnosis is concerned.
However as there is no embryo biopsy involved, it has no possibility of damaging the embryo, and thus no possibility of reducing the implantation potential of the embryos. The indications are similar to that of PGTa. It can be used for grading the embryos, and selecting embryos which will give rise to higher implantation and pregnancy rates, thus reducing the time to pregnancy, overcoming recurrent implantation/IVF failures, reducing incidence of miscarriage, increasing the chances of single rather than multiple births.
At present we are not offering this test to patients with Monogenic genetic disorders (mentioned above). It is best to look at this test as a grading test rather than a confirmatory test. In those patients, who opt for NICS, and in whom a particular blastocyst is not expanding and hatching, we do not do this test, and offer them the standard embryo biopsy instead. Many patients are happy to opt for NICS after appropriate counselling and detailed informed consenting.
Please note that all patients who conceive after NICS have to confirm the genetic status of the fetus by doing antenatal / prenatal genetic testing. Also, patients have the option of testing all those embryos that are tested abnormal by NICS, using standard embryo biopsy and PGTa before being finally tagged as abnormal & discarded.
