Matire (Ngāpuhi iwi; Te Matarahurahu hapū; Te Kotahitanga marae) has received a Māori Health Research PhD Scholarship valued at $113,791, a part of the Health Research Council of New Zealand 2019 Career Development Award. Working under Dr Janet Pitman, her research will investigate improvements to the fertility treatment, in vitro maturation (IVM).
In addition to her research, Matire aims to have conversations with Māori about the use of fertility treatments and how her research might mitigate commonly-held concerns about fertility treatments.
“While Māori opinion on these types of therapies is conservative, it’s of upmost importance to all Māori people that their whakapapa is continued in a way that regards tikanga”.
IVM treatments are currently quite rare as this method currently produces lower-quality embryos than the more commonly used IVF (in vitro fertilisation) treatments, but Matire says IVM can be a much safer option.
Under IVM, eggs are retrieved from the ovaries at an immature stage and brought to maturity in a laboratory, whereas IVF treatments use medications to bring a patient’s eggs to maturity before they are removed from the ovary. While IVF treatments usually produce higher quality embryos, stimulation of the ovaries with medication can lead to ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, where ovaries can become swollen and extremely painful Matire says.
She hopes to improve the quality of embryos produced by IVM therapy.
“The secret to improving the treatment’s success could be in mimicking, within a Petri dish, the natural environment of the ovarian follicle in which an egg would normally mature,” Matire says.
Ovarian follicles provide a variety of nutrients to the egg which are critical for egg development and maturation. Current IVM treatments can provide these nutrients to eggs in a laboratory, but at very different concentrations than are normally provided in ovarian follicles. During her research, Matire will use cow eggs to test how the molecular and metabolic pathways in immature eggs are affected by nutrients at similar concentrations to those found in ovarian follicles.
Matire, who is the first in her family to undertake university education and hopes this scholarship will lead to further postdoctoral work involving assisted reproductive technologies in women.
“I hope to continue researching in fertility clinics worldwide to expand my research capabilities and then come home to establish myself as a leading reproductive health researcher joining the few Māori women in this research field.”