Today, you will hear information about testing your male partner with a relatively new test called SpermQT. This week, the Fertility Docs, Dr. Carrie Bedient from the Fertility Center of Las Vegas, Dr. Susan Hudson from Texas Fertility Center, and Dr. Abby Eblen from Nashville Fertility Center welcome a groundbreaking guest: Dr. Kristin Brogaard, Chief Scientific Officer and Founder of Path Fertility. Kristin joins the Docs to discuss SpermQT, one of the first major innovations in male fertility testing in years. SpermQT goes beyond a traditional semen analysis to assess sperm DNA and determine whether sperm is capable of fertilizing an egg. If the SpermQT test is abnormal, it strongly suggests that natural conception or IUI will likely fail, making IVF the recommended next step.
Kristin shares how Path Fertility is conducting multiple studies to evaluate pregnancy outcomes when the SpermQT test is applied to men whose partners conceive naturally or through IUI and aims to track pregnancy through delivery. Future analysis in the IVF lab will evaluate fertilization and embryo development in men with normal versus abnormal testing. SpermQT is helping to redefine how we understand male fertility, challenging the outdated assumption that a normal semen analysis equals fertility. If you order the test the DISCOUNT CODE is FDU. ReceptivaDx sponsored this podcast.
Episode Transcript:
Susan Hudson (00:01)
You’re listening to the Fertility Docs Uncensored podcast, featuring insight on all things fertility from some of the top rated doctors around America. Whether you’re struggling to conceive or just planning for your future family, we’re here to guide you every step of the way.
Susan Hudson MD (00:22)
This podcast is sponsored by ReceptivaDx. ReceptivaDx is a powerful test used to help detect inflammatory conditions on the uterine lining, most commonly associated with endometriosis and may be the cause of failed implantation or recurrent pregnancy loss. Take advantage by learning more about this condition at receptivadx.com
and how you can get tested and treated, providing a new pathway to achieving a successful pregnancy. ReceptivaDx, because the journey is worth it.
Carrie Bedient MD (00:53)
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Fertility Docs Uncensored. I am Dr. Carrie Bedient, one of your co-hosts from the Fertility Center of Las Vegas. I am joined by my jazzy, jeweled and jovial co-host Dr. Abby Eblen from Nashville Fertility Center and Dr. Susan Hudson from Texas Fertility Center. Jazz hands, I like it. And we are joined today by Dr. Kristin Brogaard and you’re the CSO and the co-founder of Path Fertility and the originator of SpermQT. We are very excited to have you here today, both for your scientific knowledge and that we just love being around you.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (01:28)
Thank you for having me.
Abby Eblen MD (01:32)
Yes, fun person too.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (01:33)
I love being around you.
Carrie Bedient MD (01:34)
So you were telling us stories about what you like to do when you have a few minutes to read and tell us the current hot genre in your house.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (01:47)
Well, I needed a little escape from being a full-time, company owner so I’ve gotten into the romantic fantasy genre lately.
Susan Hudson MD (01:57)
That genre has exploded and it’s like it was a sleeper thing and then boom.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (02:03)
I am.
Abby Eblen MD (02:03)
So what do you guys mean by that? Because I like historical fiction. I don’t do the romance kind of thing. So why is that expanded or why is it exploded?
Susan Hudson MD (02:10)
Let me tell you, historical fiction, I love that type of stuff and the romantic fantasy is a step away from it because it still puts you in that other world and you have so many really good series out there.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (02:25)
Yes, yes, exactly.
Carrie Bedient MD (02:26)
Is this like the Court of Thorn and Roses and whatever?
Kristin Brogaard PhD (02:29)
Yes, I actually
Abby Eblen MD (02:30)
I’ve seen that book over and over again and I haven’t gotten it. ⁓ there you go. So yes, that’s the book she’s talking about.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (02:31)
I have that book holding up my computer right now. That was one of my…
Susan Hudson MD (02:39)
It’s literary crack, okay?
Kristin Brogaard PhD (02:41)
Yeah, it is. You get sucked into a world of dragons and fairies and magic and love and lust and it’s just, you can’t put it down. It’s very fun. It’s a whole other world.
Carrie Bedient MD (02:53)
That’s on my recommended list. I have a running note in my phone of books to read. Whenever I get a few minutes to go to the library or request stuff from the library, that’s on my list. It hasn’t quite hit the top. I haven’t been in a mood to read that particular stuff. But there’s nothing that will make you feel fancier and more catered to than putting in a request at your library, walking in, picking up the stuff with your name on it that’s labeled, and just walking out. I feel so fancy when I do that. Also, I may be bit of a plebeian here.
Susan Hudson MD (03:27)
I’m a huge audiobook fan because I’m driving all the time. And I have to say I’ve tried a few dramatized versions of books before and I’ve never been a fan. However, shout out to the Fourth Wing series. It’s unbelievable. You have to listen to the dramatized version. You end up paying twice as much because they split the books up into each book is two audio books.
Abby Eblen MD (03:30)
Me too, yeah.
wow.
Susan Hudson MD (03:52)
I was listening to them before the fourth book came out. And so when they published the audiobook, they published the normal audiobook first. So I bought it because I was so excited. I listened to it for 45 minutes and I was like, I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I need the voices. And I literally waited an extra three months for the dramatized version to come out. Actively listening to it right now. It is amazing. So if you are an audiobook fan, Fourth Wing, dramatized version, worth every penny.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (04:24)
That’s actually the book I was reading this morning. I took a half an hour break and I’m reading the first of the Fourth Wing. But I kind of want to jump into, yeah, the audio book. That sounds awesome.
Susan Hudson MD (04:35)
It’s amazing.
Abby Eblen MD (04:36)
Very cool.
Susan Hudson (04:36)
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Carrie Bedient MD (05:39)
Okay, so audiobooks, love, romance, and lust aside, do we have any questions today?
Susan Hudson MD (05:44)
We do have a question today. All right, it is, hi, I’m so glad I found your podcast. After nearly a decade, I’m still learning new things all the time. You always say the most embarrassing the better. So I’m hoping you’ll have the resources to be able to answer my questions. How many times a month should a man be ejaculating? My husband had a TESE and then a reversal. There was a blockage on both sides.
While his semen analysis didn’t really show much afterwards, I wonder if the results were not accurate as he goes long periods of time, including leading up to his semen analysis without ejaculating. He has a low sex drive and we only have sex a handful of times a month at that. He doesn’t masturbate. I’m not fully convinced his reversal wasn’t successful.
Carrie Bedient MD (06:30)
Hmm, okay. Kristin, do you have any opinions on the frequency of ejaculation based on all of your time spent with, I’m gonna say sperm, but that sounds much worse than it is. This is the beauty of having the guests that we get. So based on all your time spent with sperm, do you have an opinion on ejaculation intervals?
Kristin Brogaard PhD (06:51)
So the best data I’ve seen on ejaculation intervals is with DNA fragmentation. So we know that men have increased damage to their sperm DNA the longer it waits before being ejaculated. so there is relatively very, very promising and convincing data showing that very frequent ejaculation either before an IVF cycle or before, probably mostly before IVF because you don’t need as many sperm, ⁓ actually improves the quality of the sperm and decreases the DNA fragmentation rate. So there has been…
Susan Hudson MD (07:31)
So when you’re staying frequent, that can be interpreted lots of different ways.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (07:36)
Great, great point. So for having an effect on DNA fragmentation, it’s either daily or there are some papers out there where there’s only hours between in order to improve the DNA fragmentation quality. So that is really the only piece of evidence I know of.
Abby Eblen MD (07:47)
Kristin, do you know, does that extrapolate to pregnancies? Have people looked at pregnancies or fertilization or just DNA fragmentation?
Kristin Brogaard PhD (08:01)
Yes, so the DNA fragmentation is primarily linked to recurrent pregnancy loss. So they’re seeing a decrease in DNA fragmentation and they have seen a decrease in recurrent pregnancy loss in those cases. But I don’t think it is associated with fertilization and embryo quality.
Susan Hudson MD (08:17)
Sperm don’t just disappear. And so if you’re concerned that he has a low sperm count because he’s not masturbating, I would say that should not be a worry. Sometimes we’ll have guys who have had an ejaculation and come in at a very small interval and they’ll have lower counts, but maybe better quality. But if we’re looking to see if either a vasectomy reversal or some other physiologic blockage has been reversed and he has a low number of ejaculatory sessions, I don’t think that that’s really probably a contributing factor when it comes to low sperm numbers. Maybe if you have motility issues, sure. Okay, so if you have lots of them but only a small percentage are motile, then I could have some belief in that. What do y’all think?
Abby Eblen MD (09:07)
Yeah, I would agree with that.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (09:08)
I think that’s a great point. Your counts are gonna decrease with longer time. They might not be living or motile, but they wouldn’t.
Carrie Bedient MD (09:16)
Yeah. Excellent. Go sperm. Kristin, I get so excited whenever you email me because you oftentimes email me with data and that just warms the cockles of my heart. And so you guys are in, are you in the process of or have you completed all of your data collection? In the process of.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (09:30)
In the process of. Partially because we are collecting until birth. And so our primary endpoint of our clinical trial is pregnancy, but we have secondary endpoints where we want to track all the way to delivery. So it’s ongoing.
Abby Eblen MD (09:42)
Nice. That would be great.
That would be really useful information. Yeah.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (09:47)
Exactly.
Carrie Bedient MD (09:47)
So for all of our listeners, that is a very painful lift because it means from the time you stop collecting data, you have to wait at least nine months to get the data. And then you have to ask parents who have just had a newborn child that they have generally worked pretty fricking hard to get and you have to get them to respond to you. And so that is a massive lift. It’s super sexy data to have like so hot, but it is a huge lift. Tell us who you’re looking at and what you’re looking for.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (10:18)
Yes, absolutely. So this is a blinded prospective observational clinical trial. So there’s a lot of words describing what we’re looking at. The goal is, does our test, which we have shown previously in other studies to predict IUI outcomes, does it still predict IUI outcomes in a very controlled fashion, meaning there’s a limited influence of confounding factors. We’re really just blinded and tracking outcomes. So it’s a really, yes, Susan.
Susan Hudson MD (10:52)
The test you’re referring to is SpermQT.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (10:54)
Yes, thank you for saying that. So SpermQT is now commercially available and is predictive of IUI outcomes. But at Path Fertility, our company, we’re very, very data focused. And if we want to get SpermQT into the ASRM, which are the industry standard guidelines for male fertility, we really have to keep building up our data sets to show that we are predictive. So what we did in collaboration with a large fertility network called US Fertility is we designed a clinical trial to test men coming in that are eligible and the couples are eligible for IUI. We took a semen sample and we tested it. So we got our SpermQT result, but we didn’t share that result with the patient or the physician. So it’s blinded. Yes, Carrie.
Carrie Bedient MD (11:40)
So what, when you say the people who are eligible for IUI, what was the cutoff that was used there to say, okay, if you have a sperm count or a total motile count above this point, we consider you eligible. What number did you guys use?
Kristin Brogaard PhD (11:54)
Yeah, so that was at the discretion of the physician. They could not be azoospermic for sure. And in most cases, all men are above 5 million per mil, which is a cutoff for IUI. But I would say looking at our data, we have very, very few men that are below the 15 million per mil cutoff.
Abby Eblen MD (12:00)
No sperm, zero sperm, zero sperm.
Carrie Bedient MD (12:17)
Is it 15 million per mil or is it 15 million total motile count?
Kristin Brogaard PhD (12:21)
When I was looking at the current data, there’s very few below the 15 million per mil concentration. And also for total motile count, we see very few below 20 million total.
Carrie Bedient MD (12:34)
Wow, that’s really generous.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (12:34)
So these men are normal semen numbers. Yeah.
Susan Hudson MD (12:40)
That’s very good. That means they’re very applicable numbers to a lot of people.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (12:44)
Exactly, exactly. And the average total motile count for our guys was about 120 million. So they were relatively high. And then the other factors is the females were younger than 38. The men were younger than 45. There was a BMI of 40 or under. And the women had to be ovulatory with support or ovulatory and have one open tube at least. So really candidates for IUI. But it was really up to the physician’s discretion at that point if they consider them eligible. And so we got SpermQT results for these patients, but we didn’t tell anybody what they were. So the blinded is the keyword there.
Susan Hudson MD (13:25)
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Kristin Brogaard PhD (13:54)
Yes, Abby.
Abby Eblen MD (13:55)
In our book, IVF Blueprint, we love SpermQT and we talk a lot about it, but could you just, for our listeners that don’t know what SpermQT is, could you kind of go through that real quick so they understand what the test actually is and what it looks at?
Kristin Brogaard PhD (14:07)
Absolutely. When we receive a sample in our laboratory, in this study we received it right at the beginning of their journey, we isolate the sperm from the semen, we open up the head of the sperm, and then we sequence the epigenetics, specifically the DNA methylation across 1,233 genes. And we know those genes are critical for sperm to function properly.
So they are things like capacitation, acrosome reactions, cell signaling, things that are very, very essential for a sperm to find, bind, penetrate, and fertilize an egg. And what we have found in our previous work over the last six years is that if men deviate from the right genes being turned on and off, we know which ones those are based on fertile controls, we can actually predict if they were gonna be successful with IUI. So really when you put in IUI,
you’re just recreating natural pregnancy, but doing it at the right time and putting things in the right spot. So, but in that case, the sperm still need to function properly. And we’re seeing that men who don’t have those right genes turned on and off, the likelihood of IUI success is really low. And now in our newest data, when we look at that first cycle of IUI, and we look at all pregnancies, so spontaneous, timed intercourse cycles, and IUI. So any pregnancy that happened before the procedure, while we were prepping for the procedure, IUI, or timed intercourse, the men with an abnormal result have a 3.4 % chance of achieving pregnancy. And this is controlling as much as we can for female factors. The men with the normal result, including spontaneous pregnancies, it’s 19.1%.
Abby Eblen MD (15:51)
Wow, that’s a huge difference. Yeah.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (15:52)
Huge difference. That’s a 5.8 fold change. And it’s pretty consistent now when we were looking at our previous data, we’re seeing that type of difference. And so in this clinical trial, we’re seeing it again, where we are testing it, but they’re not providing feedback to physicians. We’re tracking outcomes and we’re seeing the same exact phenomenon that SpermQT is predictive of outcomes and not only just IUI, but it’s predictive of time intercourse and spontaneous pregnancy.
Abby Eblen MD (16:25)
So the question I get all the time and the question that I always have is have you looked at guys yet or is this in the works that change lifestyle? Because you’d mentioned at one point that you think lifestyle change can make a difference. Have you done that? Are you seeing that? Or is that something to be done in the future?
Kristin Brogaard PhD (16:37)
Yes. Yeah, we know before we even started with SpermQT, we know that lifestyle modifications change sperm DNA methylation. What we didn’t know was does it change SpermQT specifically? And what we’ve seen now anecdotally, and I would love, Carrie, you to mention what you’ve seen in your patient, but we’ve seen anecdotally now in lots of men with an abnormal result, their physician gives recommendations for lifestyle modifications, pretty standard ones that I think you three probably give often, reduce marijuana use, smoking, BMI, exercise, alcohol. Yes, alcohol is a big one. And then retest. And we’ve seen now so many times that it’s gone from an abnormal to a normal. So I see the future of SpermQT really focusing on specific lifestyle modifications.
Susan Hudson MD (17:28)
So with that being said, know a lot of times we’ll all have people come into our clinics and the women are like, my partner doesn’t need to be tested. He already has three kids. We know he’s not the problem. What are your comments regarding that?
Kristin Brogaard PhD (17:43)
Sperm DNA methylation changes with every spermatogenesis cycle. So you could have had three kids two years ago, that does not indicate the health of your sperm right now. Even semen parameters, not just sperm epigenetics, they change drastically with what you’re exposed to. Is he on testosterone? Is he drinking too much? Is he stressed?
It’s not an indicator, it’s helpful. It’s really helpful piece of information that he probably could get back to a healthy state, but that doesn’t mean he’s healthy now.
Susan Hudson MD (18:13)
What do you recommend for, sometimes we have guys come in and they’ve got lots of things they can obviously work on. Okay. And those, those honestly are the easy ones to have the conversation because it’s okay. Don’t drink, lose weight, get your diabetes and high blood pressure under control, all those types of things. Stop your marijuana. Yes. But the challenge we also have are people who don’t have any reversible factors. So either they’re a normal age and what I’m meaning by that is under 40. They’re young reproductive age and there’s nothing identifiable I can change. Or they’re just older. It’s not unusual to have gentlemen come in who are in their 40s, sometimes 50s and on up.
Abby Eblen MD (18:43)
Young reproductive age, yeah.
Susan Hudson MD (18:57)
And they’re going to have often, more often in my experience, have an abnormal SpermQT. Is there any data to support any other intervention, supplements, anything else we can do if there’s not an obvious lifestyle factor that they can address?
Kristin Brogaard PhD (19:14)
Yeah, that is such a great question. And some people don’t even have the luxury of time to address anything quickly. So I’ll answer that in two ways. One, an intervention that works is IVF with ICSI. So it’s a procedure that works if there’s an abnormal SpermQT, which is standard of care for a male factor. So when there’s a male factor going on, IVF with ICSI is the standard of care. So if a couple doesn’t have the luxury of time or really can’t figure out anything else to change. They’ve optimized their health. There’s an option, a procedural option that could really get them to a pregnancy more quickly. I am really interested in therapeutic interventions for men that might improve their genetics that’s beyond lifestyle. So looking at the anastrazole, clomid and the high-potent antioxidant use, we’ve seen some DNA methylation changes with antioxidant use. So that could be an interesting addition, but we don’t have the data yet to pinpoint exactly what to do and when. So I wouldn’t be able to recommend anything because we just need more and more data for that. There’s also some men probably because of genetics, have abnormal epigenetics. So there are some men who probably can’t change that part of them. So that’s an important point as well.
Abby Eblen MD (20:29)
One thing too I wonder about, Susan, that was a great question, because I have at least two guys, in fact, the very first guy that did this test, when it came back abnormal, he was 25, young, healthy, in the medical field, and they went on to do IVF and were successful, but ultimately, I had that same question, well, he doesn’t have any lifestyle issues, but I start to think about in women, we see that the athletes triad, it’s stress, low fat diet, heavy exercise, and I wonder if that, impacts men in the way it does women. If the body’s trying to conserve energy, maybe it’s like flipping off the genes to help him father a child. I wonder is that something you guys have looked at at all?
Kristin Brogaard PhD (21:00)
We haven’t, but there’s data out there showing that exact thing, that stress, sleep, all of that stuff that we know impacts our somatic health is impacting sperm health. So there might not be something obvious like a BMI number or smoking, just excessive exercise increases inflammation, increases DNA damage in sperm. So there’s a lot of things that are really impacting sperm quality that might not be kind of the top big ones that you see in the clinic.
Carrie Bedient MD (21:31)
So the patient that Kristin was referring to was the one that sold me on SpermQT that we were all super excited about is I had a couple where they came in, she was under 35, he had known sperm issues, had a low count, IVF was always the only option. The counts were never high enough to do anything else. And we did an IVF cycle and didn’t get anywhere with it. We got embryos, but had a miscarriage.
Transferred all them, didn’t work, did another IVF cycle, same thing, didn’t work, miscarriages or negatives. And then they said, okay, we’re really going to clean everything up. And so he stopped drinking, he stopped smoking, he stopped doing any other substances. He started supplementing with vitamin D, Fertil-Aid, Vitamin D, vitamin C, omegas.
B complex, arginine, all of this set of supplementation. And then we did the frequent ejaculation protocol with him, got more embryos that were euploid, so correct number of chromosomes than we had ever had, first transfer, baby. She was already 38 by this point, by the time they came back and they were ready to try. And so we had repeated the SpermQT, we did it initially as soon as it came out, which was after they had already done their first two cycles. The initial result was an abnormal result. And then he made all these changes. We retested, because we were just curious. The QT came back normal at that point after he had really made those changes. And then that’s when they went on to do IVF and got really amazing results.
Susan Hudson MD (23:00)
Carrie, I’m curious in that patient, did you do DNA fragmentation testing while you were doing those other things? Because a lot of those interventions, I think, are pretty tightly correlated with DNA fragmentation. Not that you couldn’t fix DNA fragmentation and also fix the abnormal DNA methylation and turning on and off of the genes. I’m just curious.
Carrie Bedient MD (23:15)
Mm-hmm.
I think we did. I don’t remember that off the top of my head. I know we did at some point, but honestly I don’t know that I remember that. Now I’m…
Abby Eblen MD (23:34)
If his count was really low, you may not have had enough to do DNA fragmentation.
Carrie Bedient MD (23:38)
Yeah
Susan Hudson MD (23:39)
If you had enough to do a SpermQT, usually you have enough to do DNA methylation. So for our listeners, generally how much sperm do we need to be able to get the test run?
Kristin Brogaard PhD (23:49)
Yeah, we have a 1 million sperm total cutoff, but we do see more failures if you’re really, really low. But if you’re severely oligospermic, meaning you really low sperm counts, you already know that there’s a male factor and might not, and SpermQT might not be the right choice. But we’ve gotten away with about a million cells.
Susan Hudson MD (24:11)
But it can be a helpful thing in helping figure out especially now that the pendulum is swinging between ICSI back over to standard insemination. These people with the abnormal SpermQT, they generally are going to need the ICSI where we inject the best looking sperm into each egg because what these genes don’t know how to do is actually get in. So my understanding is once they get in, they know how to do their job.
That can also play a factor in it. So if you’re really trying to minimize your ICSI and you’re having results you’re not expecting and not as good a fertilization, this might be a solution.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (24:47)
Yeah, that’s exactly right.
Abby Eblen MD (24:49)
So Kristin, what’s on the horizon? What have you got out there planned for SpermQT testing that we may be interested in going forward?
Kristin Brogaard PhD (24:56)
I’m so excited for the future. I love that question. So I feel like with sperm epigenetics in general, we are just scratching the surface. This is where the data led us, IUI prediction. I think with our clinical trial and sitting on a lot of new epigenetic data, we could one, improve our current test to be even more predictive and maybe even subset individuals into different classifications of infertility rather than bucketing them all together, which we’re doing right now. I also know that with their clinical trial and the other data we have, we now have split cycles, standard insemination and ICSI. We have miscarriage rates, we have embryo quality data, we have fertilization rates. What I can’t wait to do is once we get to a really good of these patients with outcomes is do additional discovery and identify, can we be predictive of multiple steps throughout the fertility journey? Not just IUI outcomes, which is really important and you need to know that early on, but can we predict implantation success and embryo quality? There’s things you can do to optimize each one of those steps. And if you had that knowledge, I think it would be really powerful. So I’m very excited about what’s to come with SpermQT because I’m imagining it to be a much broader, more comprehensive test in the future as we get more and more data.
Susan Hudson MD (26:23)
I was curious at what point in sperm formation, so it takes on average 72 days to make new sperm, Is the methylation process that essentially turns these genes on or off, is that something that can happen anytime in those 72 days? Meaning maybe we know we’re gonna go forward doing something and I don’t have a full two and a half months to make an impact, but would I have at least some impact if I made a lifestyle change or made some sort of modification to improve parameters?
Kristin Brogaard PhD (26:57)
Yes.
Yeah, great, great question. So sperm is a population. There’s all different, when you look at sperm, they’re all unique in their own way and they have their own epigenetics associated with them. As you make lifestyle modifications during out the spermatogenesis cycle, you can be modifying those new ones being developed and shifting the population of sperm. That, three months is when you can get a whole new set. So you get all the bad guys out
but you can absolutely be shifting the population of sperm. What’s really interesting about sperm and makes it a fantastic substrate or specimen to analyze is once they are mature, there’s no changes in methylation. There’s no gene expression here. They are static little creatures. So all those changes that are happening are in the testicle during spermatogenesis at all the cycles, meiotic and mitotic, all the ones getting to that mature sperm, but once it’s mature, the DNA condenses down, it’s super tight, and it’s not active anymore. So you have to hope that all the right things were made, all the right proteins are on the membrane, all the right RNAs are in the head, once that is mature. So you can shift your population and then it’s not active when it’s mature.
Carrie Bedient MD (28:09)
So I have an adjacent question to all of this is how did a nice girl like you end up in a field of study like this?
Kristin Brogaard PhD (28:17)
Okay, so in reality, I have the sense of humor of like a 13 year old boy, and I think it’s so funny to talk about sperm and sex. I fit in really well, my friends think it’s so funny because it just kind of fits my my little silly personality. Well, also, I love I did my first startup out of my postdoctoral work and I got the bug for starting companies.
I love creating something from nothing and actually developing a solution for an important need. And when this problem in the field was presented to me by my current co-founder, we weren’t co-founders then, I fell in love with it. I thought the biology was cool. The mission hit home that all this burdens on the female partner and the guy is just ejaculating into a cup and that’s all we’re doing. Like testing is counting the sperm. So.
And then it kind of fit with my silly personality of laughing at sex jokes and stuff.
Abby Eblen MD (29:06)
Okay, so a follow up question of that, when you go to a cocktail party and somebody walks up to you and starts talking to you and they ask, well, what do you do, Kristin? What’s your reply to that? Give me the funny response and the serious response.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (29:15)
I don’t give a funny response, but I wish I should work with you guys to get like a one liner. Yeah, it’s just focusing on me with the body. Yeah, On elbow, deep in sperm or something like that.
Abby Eblen MD (29:21)
You need a funny response.
Carrie Bedient MD (29:23)
Yeah!
Abby Eblen MD (29:25)
I have my hands in sperm all day or something like that.
Carrie Bedient MD (29:28)
The quality of a man by his ejaculate.
Abby Eblen MD (29:31)
Yeah, I know a lot more about you if I knew what your ejaculate would look like.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (29:36)
I should bring cups with me to a cocktail party.
Abby Eblen MD (29:37)
I will be great.
Here’s what I did all day.
Carrie Bedient MD (29:41)
Branded, branded cups with you, like, QT with pictures.
Abby Eblen MD (29:43)
Yeah, it’s from QT Cups.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (29:46)
That is a really great idea. No, I haven’t gotten to that level yet.
Abby Eblen MD (29:49)
Yes, and you’re entrepreneurial.
You ought to come up with some cups with your branding on them.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (29:53)
I love that, like my business card is this.
Abby Eblen MD (29:55)
Drinking cups, drinking cups with your branded stuff on them.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (29:58)
I love that too.
Carrie Bedient MD (29:59)
No. Ew.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (30:02)
No!
Abby, you took it too far!
Abby Eblen MD (30:04)
Oh, I’m sorry. If I freak Carrie out, we know we’re in trouble.
Carrie Bedient MD (30:08)
Normally Abby is the good one out of all of us. So I’m impressed, Abby. Good work.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (30:12)
Ugh, you’re making me blush. That’s really cute.
Abby Eblen MD (30:17)
Yeah, usually I don’t do that.
Susan Hudson MD (30:18)
Remark number one that has the humor of a 13-year-old boy blush.
Carrie Bedient MD (30:23)
Good work.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (30:24)
Good job.
Carrie Bedient MD (30:25)
You should do semen analysis collection vials that are branded that have, instead of the base being flat like a normal collection cup that have kind of that taper like the end of a test tube so that everything concentrates down so that you don’t miss a single drop of liquid gold.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (30:37)
Yes, yes, I love it. Singles drop, you get all of them. I love that. That’s a great idea. We should have our own. That’s, yeah, get every last drop. All right, convinced. Okay.
Carrie Bedient MD (30:48)
Patent it. Put me in the list.
Abby Eblen MD (30:49)
One of the, well, as a gift for people that you like or maybe people that you don’t like, at ASRM one year they had like mouse pads that had, and you’ve probably seen them, they have a little sperm and when you move the mouse pad it has some liquid in it and looks like the sperm. So, to my cup again, sorry to gross you out, but that’d be really cool if you had a cup with like a little sperm that were swimming around. Maybe not a drinking cup, I don’t know, maybe a planter for your vegetables or something, but.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (31:03)
I have seen that. That’s pretty cool.
I love it. love it. All right. I’m jotting these down. Yeah, Carrie has some great idea right now.
Carrie Bedient MD (31:23)
Yeah, this will occupy me for a week.
Susan Hudson MD (31:24)
You might want to internalize this one.
Abby Eblen MD (31:26)
Hahaha.
Carrie Bedient MD (31:27)
This will occupy me for the rest of the day.
Abby Eblen MD (31:28)
Well, anything we didn’t cover, any other exciting news we need to know about SpermQT and all the active work you guys are doing.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (31:35)
We have really cool projects in the pipeline as well in other areas of male fertility, especially when there’s no sperm. We actually are working on an ability to predict if there’s sperm in the testicle using DNA methylation from cell-free DNA in the semen and working really hard. We have a clinical trial going right now. So the goal there is men who don’t have any sperm they usually have to get a testicular extraction, which is a very, very invasive and expensive procedure that has a 50 % likelihood of success. So this will predict that in order to give better expectation and prediction to decide if you want to go through a very, very invasive procedure and likelihood of achieving a successful sperm extraction.
Carrie Bedient MD (32:21)
How close are we to being able to have that test available to us?
Kristin Brogaard PhD (32:25)
I’m thinking end of this year.
Abby Eblen MD (32:27)
Wow, you’re kidding. I the urologists are very excited. I bet they can’t wait.
Carrie Bedient MD (32:27)
Yes, boss!
Kristin Brogaard PhD (32:31)
Yeah, it is pretty exceptional. So we’re very excited about it.
Carrie Bedient MD (32:37)
So tell our listeners how they can access this test. And of course, one easy way that I know how to tell them is if your doctor automatically orders it, that’s super easy. But if they have a doc who doesn’t necessarily know about it, how do they get there?
Kristin Brogaard PhD (32:41)
Yes.
Yeah, absolutely. You can ask your doctor for it and it’s growing. So people hopefully know how to do it. If they do not, you actually can order the test directly from our website, which is path P A T H fertility.com. And we have a physician on the back end that will be there to review results with you and make that order for you. So you can have a consultation depending if you want to with the results.
And we have a discount code for all our FDU listeners. So it’s just FDU discount. You put it in, you get a discount on SpermQT. So you just go to pathfertility.com. And what I would recommend to the viewers when they’re listening, it’s really important to get a comprehensive assessment of the male partner as early as possible. Semen analysis, SpermQT and just start talking about that because that really can change the trajectory of your fertility treatment if there’s a male factor. So the earlier the better when you feel like you’re struggling to get pregnant.
Carrie Bedient MD (33:53)
All right, and tell us the discount code one more time.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (33:55)
It’s the letters F-D-U, which stands for Fertility Docs Uncensored. My favorite podcast.
Carrie Bedient MD (34:03)
That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming to play with us, Kristin. We always love having you and your sense of humor around with us. Whenever we’re at conferences, we always find ourselves hanging out together, which is delightful. So thank you so much for coming to play with us.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (34:20)
Thanks for the opportunity. This is always a pleasure.
Carrie Bedient MD (34:23)
And to our audience. Thank you so much for listening. Subscribe to Apple Podcasts. We have next Tuesday’s episode pop up for you. Subscribe to YouTube. That really helps us spread reliable information and help as many people as possible.
Abby Eblen MD (34:31)
You can also visit us on fertilitydocsuncensored.com to submit specific questions you have and sign up for an email list. And don’t forget our upcoming book, The IVF Blueprint coming out in September.
Susan Hudson MD (34:43)
As always, this podcast is intended for entertainment and is not a substitute for medical advice from your own physician. Subscribe, sign up for emails, and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye!
Abby Eblen MD (34:52)
Bye.
Kristin Brogaard PhD (34:53)
Bye.
Carrie Bedient MD (34:55)
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