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Biotech nanocap Memphasys (ASX:MEM) has sent a demo unit of its Felix sperm separator system to a hospital in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
In short, to make artificial insemination work, you need to separate the actual sperm from semen, which is otherwise just another version of something the human body is pretty good at making: Mucus. (Sorry.)
The Felix device uses the same process used to separate DNA and protein molecules from other mediums – electrophoresis.
So what the hell is that? That’s what I said, too.
It works like this: Individual sperms happen to carry a negative charge due to their chemistry – going into why is incredibly boring – and so by placing the semen in a conductive salted gel, adding some membranes, and playing around with electricity thereafter, you eventually end up with isolated sperm.
It is, perhaps, a little more complex than one might think.
According to Memphasys’s website, it was the first company to commercialise this method after taking heed of development rights in 2015. One can find research articles about electrophoresis in sperm isolation going back to 2011.
Then I kept digging and I found a CSIRO research article from 1979 which references another paper outlining the process, published in 1969 by authors Panyim and Chalkley.
To be fair, they weren’t trying to isolate sperm from semen at the time, but they were still using sperm – so the tech has been around for half a century.
Despite Memphasys reporting its the first to commercialise this, its overall share price performance is perhaps underwhelming. The company is currently worth half a cent and, even worse for morale, its turnover is unfortunate – $1,000 worth of shares were traded by 1pm on Thursday.
Still, potential is there. An American paper from 2023 states around one in six couples in the UAE in at least one populated area are ‘infertile.’ Memphasys also noted one could, hypothetically, travel to Dubai to use the tech, assuming it becomes normalised.
Whether that would be enough to juice some liquidity into the stock remains an open question.
“We are excited to explore the system’s applicability in the UAE and look forward to feedback from this important evaluation process,” MEM CEO Dr. David Ali said.
MEM last traded at 0.5cps.
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