One of the toughest parts of the popular fertility treatment may soon be a thing of the past.<\/p>\n
Every year, hundreds of thousands of women across the country undergo IVF<\/a>, a physically and emotionally draining process that involves retrieving multiple eggs from the ovaries and fertilizing them with sperm in a lab.<\/p>\n In the weeks leading up to egg retrieval, patients must inject themselves with hormones at precise times each day \u2014 a routine often described as one of the most stressful and painful parts of IVF.<\/p>\n Suzi Media \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n Now, scientists at McGill University may have found a way to ease that burden.<\/p>\n They\u2019ve developed a light-activated microneedle patch<\/a> that can deliver hormones automatically at the right time, making the process less painful \u2014 and potentially increasing the chances of a successful pregnancy<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIVF success rates are at best 30%, even for the youngest women,\u201d Vivienne Tam, a PhD student at McGill who was the lead author of the study, said in a press release<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe hope is that if you take out the human error with injecting yourself and deliver the drug at times optimized for each patient, you could potentially see this success rate go up.\u201d <\/p>\n The delivery system relies on a hydrogel microneedle patch packed with specially engineered nanoparticles that store and release a key IVF hormone, leuprolide, when activated by near-infrared light.<\/p>\n To build it, the team first determined how many hormone-loaded nanoparticles each microneedle could hold without compromising its ability to penetrate the skin.<\/p>\n Next, they tested whether the light could reliably release the hormone in a porcine skin model over two hours.<\/p>\n Small (2025). DOI: 10.1002\/smll.202513138<\/p>\n Finally, they demonstrated that even a short five-minute pulse of light could deliver measurable levels of leuprolide into the skin, bloodstream, and organs of a live rat. <\/p>\n \u201cThe light can also be programmed to release the drug at the specific time the drug is needed, which could differ for each individual,\u201d Tam said. <\/p>\n While the concept of light-triggered drug delivery isn\u2019t new, earlier attempts ran into a key obstacle: they often released foreign substances into the body, raising serious safety and regulatory concerns.<\/p>\n But McGill\u2019s new patch avoids that problem entirely.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the first time that we were able to show light-triggered drug release from a nanoparticle-microneedle composite without releasing any foreign substance into the body,\u201d said Marta Cerruti<\/a>, a materials engineering professor and senior author of the study. <\/p>\n The researchers said this breakthrough could make the technology a more realistic treatment option, potentially paving the way for faster clinical adoption than previous designs. <\/p>\n leszekglasner \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n The development comes as demand for IVF continues to rise, driven by advances in medical technology, increased awareness and wider employer coverage<\/a>.<\/p>\n At the same time, couples waiting longer to have children, along with declining fertility rates<\/a>, have made IVF an increasingly common route to parenthood.<\/p>\n In the US, 42% of adults said in 2023 that they or someone they know has used fertility treatments like IVF \u2014 up from 33% just five years earlier, according to the Pew Research Center<\/a>. <\/p>\n