Mitochondrial replacement techniques, or MRT, have been marketed by some fertility businesses as a possible answer to age-related infertility. An eight-month STAT investigation found that the evidence supporting that use remains limited, particularly for women 35 years and older, even as companies sold access to the experimental procedure abroad for tens of thousands of dollars.
The reporting centered in part on International Fertility Group, a U.S.-based company that connected patients to MRT outside the United States. After STAT contacted the company about marketing materials that several experts described as “misleading” and “unethical,” IFG removed them. The company’s MRT program is now on pause.
The evidence gap
According to STAT’s reporting, there are currently no peer-reviewed studies in humans supporting the idea that MRT can overcome infertility issues caused by aging, especially in women 35 years and older.
A pilot study from a fertility clinic in Greece, published in 2023, reported that MRT could improve live birth rates for women under the age of 40, but the biggest improvements were in the youngest patients. For the 12 patients who were 39 at the time of MRT, the live birth rate was less than 10%.
Researchers affiliated with IFG presented data in a conference abstract for a 2025 European scientific meeting claiming that among 66 patients with a mean age of 39, live birth rates following MRT reached rates of 40% or higher. But scientists told STAT the abstract lacked key information required to support that claim, and a conference organizer questioned whether it should have been accepted.
STAT also reported that the most compelling evidence MRT might work in older women comes from a single lab study in mice. Experts told the outlet that even the underlying hypothesis linking mitochondrial dysfunction to age-related infertility has very little direct evidence.
What the reported outcomes suggest
Before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv had become a center for MRT as an infertility treatment. Unpublished data from the Nadiya Clinic there, described by STAT as the most advanced operation in Kyiv, found that a form of MRT called pronuclear transfer did not improve IVF odds for older women.
Among 19 patients aged 36 to 44, only one gave birth to a baby following pronuclear transfer. Among 10 infertile patients under the age of 35, MRT resulted in nine live births.
Those figures do not settle the science, but they sharpen the commercial problem around this market: the strongest apparent outcomes came in younger patients, while promotional demand was often aimed at older women facing lower IVF success rates.
The commercial signal
IFG had advertised its MRT program as “a groundbreaking fertility treatment that offers renewed hope to women with advanced maternal age or a history of failed cycles.” Its social media posts frequently targeted women over the age of 35, and internal data cited by STAT showed clients were getting older: the average age in the program was 39.2 years old in 2022 and 45.6 years old last year.
In a statement, IFG said the evidence for MRT remains limited and said its role is to provide nonmedical support to patients. “IFG does not characterize innovative treatment as guaranteed, routine, or risk-free,” the company said. “Patients are not promised a pregnancy, a live birth, or any particular outcome.”
Last week, hours after STAT’s investigation was published, Birol Aydin, the Turkish embryologist who performed the procedure for IFG clients in Albania, said on LinkedIn that he was stepping back from clinical work to focus on research.
Clinics unaffiliated with IFG in Mexico and the Bahamas are still marketing MRT as a fertility treatment to women 40 and older, according to STAT, but neither has published outcome data. That leaves the industry’s central tension intact: demand is being monetized faster than the supporting evidence is being built.
