Chabad Rabbi engineers fertility hope
His work offers an engineering solution for a critical medical issue faced by many couples struggling to conceive.
Rabbi Dr Sholom Shuchat, a Chabad Rabbi and engineer from Tel Aviv University, has developed a groundbreaking male infertility treatment and earlier this year visited Australia to seek investment for the project.
His work offers an engineering solution for a critical medical issue faced by many couples struggling to conceive.
The innovation uses microfluidics and artificial intelligence to scan sperm samples more thoroughly than current manual methods.
The process sends samples through an extremely thin channel in a wide, thin layer.
“There’s a camera imaging it at all times… We trained an AI model for image analysis that can tell the difference between a cell that’s a regular cell and a cell with a tail that’s a sperm,” Dr Shuchat said.
This automated system aims to identify sperm cells that may be missed in conventional analyses.
Based on data from clinics performing extensive manual searches, Dr Shuchat estimates up to 45 per cent of patients being referred for invasive and not always successful surgery may not actually need it.
His technology could potentially reduce that figure and might be used in future to find sperm in samples from testicular biopsies and surgeries, a notoriously difficult task.
The project arose from Dr Shuchat’s personal struggle with infertility.
After being told by multiple clinics that he had no sperm and should consider surgery or adoption, he eventually found success through persistence and a clinic that performed a more thorough analysis.
“I don’t want other people to face that,” he said, referring to the emotional toll and potentially unnecessary medical procedures.
His work is deeply rooted in his spiritual values.
“The first commandment in the Torah is ‘Be fruitful and multiply’. When you’re in a Jewish community and you don’t have children, it can be very difficult,” Dr Shuchat noted.
Australian Friends of Tel Aviv University is supporting Dr Shuchat’s visit.
“I started to realise how meritorious this project is, and I set a goal to help Sholom raise the philanthropic funding that he’s looking for,” said David Solomon, the organisation’s CEO.
The project has reached proof of concept stage, demonstrating success under simplified conditions.
Dr Shuchat is now seeking philanthropic funding to further develop the technology with actual clinical samples, making it more attractive for commercial investment.
“We believe philanthropic funding could do that in the most cost-efficient way,” he explained, though he remains open to commercial investment discussions.
For Dr Shuchat, the project transcends financial motivations.
“My goal is not financial,” he emphasised. “My goal is to help somebody else not to have to go through what I went through.”
comments