LUBBOCK, Texas – The pandemic struck the livestock industry in ways that left animal producers struggling to find ways to keep production growing.
“We know that we can go to the grocery store and buy whatever product we want, at any given time and we don’t really think about where this food comes from, but whenever these products were not available and not in stock, it was scary. So it was really up to the animal producers to figure out how they could keep their products and keep their animals growing,” Dr. Cara Wells said.
Dr. Wells, a recent Texas Tech graduate, sought to create a solution that helped animal producers reach viable outcomes in livestock reproduction.
Dr. Wells worked with a team of researchers to create EmGenisys, an animal health company with a focus on creating non-invasive digital solutions to predicting embryo viability to improve outcomes of assisted reproductive techniques such as IVF, and embryo transfer within livestock.
“It’s our goal to produce as much protein or milk or product as economically as possible. We want to do that while promoting the welfare and the environmental sustainability of the production practice that we’re at,” said Dr. Wells.
EmGenisys promotes the welfare of animals through non-invasive technology by using machine vision and learning to look at videos of embryos to know which is viable to improve chances of pregnancy.
Dr. Wells and her team recently won a grant at Grow-NY for $250,000, hoping to have an app and software developed soon that is user-friendly in even the most rural areas.
“It doesn’t matter how good the data is, or how good the science is, if it can’t be used in a matter of seconds,” said Dr. Wells
Dr. Wells has been working closely with chief Veterinary officer Dr. Russell Killingsworth, who has exclusively been doing embryo transfer in his practice for a while now, collecting his own data for the past two years and collected the initial data for EmGenisys.
“I’ve just integrated the EmGenisys work into my routine practice for the clients that I do embryo transfer work for,” said Dr. Killingsworth, “As an embryo technician, veterinarian, my ultimate goal is to make my clients more successful.”
Research that EmGenisys hopes will save livestock farmers money and time in the future.
“Yes, I’m a veterinarian, but I’m still learning, still a lifetime student. So the chance to look at something new and novel was exciting, to be involved in something like that. And then when the results started matching up, that made it even that much better,” said Dr. Killingsworth.
Emgenisys currently focuses on livestock reproduction with the ability to expand in the future.
“We are focused on cattle right now. But a mammalian embryo is an embryo. There are differences, but they all are growing, developing essentially the same way. So this certainly has the possibility to expand to other species, sheep, goats, horses, and even humans,” said Dr. Killingsworth.
Currently, EmGenysis’ research models have been performing with an 85-95% prediction accuracy with hopes of launching a user friendly software and app. For any questions or interest in the research, contact Dr. Wells at Cara@emgenisys.com
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