Sheena Lewis chalked up a remarkable first with the January 2012 edition of Focus on Reproduction, the quarterly periodical of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.
‘Not only was my work the main story,’ she says, ‘but it was the first time they’d ever had a picture of a sperm on the cover.’
While the feature was undoubtedly a highlight in her professional sphere – she is Professor of Reproductive Medicine at Queen’s and leads the University’s research group in that field – her work has been attracting attention literally from Albuquerque to Azerbaijan, making an impact on the people who need it most: couples who are struggling to have children.
As she explains, ‘One in six couples will have difficulty having a family and 40 per cent of these problems relate to the man. The only test for a man up until now has been semen analysis – basically just looking down the microscope at the sperm, seeing how many, how fast they’re moving. It’s a very blunt instrument.’
Over the last 20 years her research has focused on the molecular structure of the sperm’s DNA instead. Funding has included grants from the European Framework 7 Programme, National Institute of Health Research, the Wellcome Trust and the Research and Development Office in Belfast.
‘The only thing that is really important in any sperm is its DNA. That’s what combines with the egg to form the embryo. Nothing else matters. So we’ve been looking at it at a very advanced molecular level. Then in 2010 our research group published four papers in the best journals in the UK and the US and suddenly Reuters took an interest and infertile couples started emailing me, asking – how can we have this test?’ It gave Professor Lewis pause for thought. ‘I was thinking –"We can have partners in other countries, we can have clinics working in collaboration with us, but we want to do the work here and keep it local." I’m an academic. We’re not selling to the public. And then I thought – we have a responsibility to do this. Here we have a process from bench to bedside. Quite simply - we’ve developed a test which could be useful in giving better diagnoses and prognoses for men who’ve got fertility problems. Why shouldn’t we go ahead?’
The result is the spin-out company Lewis Fertility Testing Ltd, of which she is Managing Director, which was launched with the help of QUBIS.
‘This is a local business with a global market. What happens is that fertility clinics sign contracts with us and then they send us their samples for testing. Some of the clinics in the UK have satellite clinics in India and China. We can test those too. Samples can easily be couriered to us from anywhere. It doesn’t matter what corner of the world the men are attending for fertility treatment.’
What is unique about the Lewis method is that it is the first quantitative test – looking at the amount of broken DNA in individual sperm, counting it up and giving a measure of the amount of damage. Then there are clinical thresholds.
‘We can guide clinics and couples to the right treatment. But what we provide is not a treatment itself – it is a diagnostic test – and we are going to want to keep the intellectual property rights for that here in Belfast. We can have partners in other countries, we can have clinics working in collaboration with us, but we want to do the work here and keep it local. We also have other tests in the pipeline which will add to our portfolio.’
Male fertility problems produce a central issue – how does the man involved feel?
Professor Lewis says, ‘The psychological barriers are huge and have to be overcome. It can be difficult for men because they’re inclined to think that infertility is associated with a lack of virility – and it’s not.’
In her role as chair of the andrology section of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology she has been running workshops, including one in Seville. ‘We called it The Whole Man. We had counsellors, psychologists, clinicians all coming together to discuss how to talk to men about their fertility problems.’
And problems can be cured. ‘We have testimonials from people who have been helped. People are so grateful and we’re always delighted to hear of success. That’s real impact.
‘Next to the human desire for survival is the desire to reproduce. Everyone wants to have their own child. They want to have that little bit of themselves in the next generation and when they find they can’t have that, it breaks their hearts.’
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