In the mid 1990’s Reproductive Biology Associates recognized the potential clinical advantages that oocyte cryopreservation could bring to patients requiring the use of donated eggs. RBA’s initial egg freezing success came in 1997, when the practice reported the first births in the Western Hemisphere from frozen donor eggs. In 2000, after further refinement of the technique, RBA began to offer egg freezing as a means of preserving fertility in cancer patients facing fertility-threatening oncology treatment. In 2007, the RBA scientific team achieved it’s most important egg freezing breakthrough to date based on scientific research initiated in 2004 to explore an alternative way of cryopreservation call “vitrification”. Utilizing this new rapid freezing technique with egg donors between ages 21-30, RBA achieved pregnancy rates equal to fresh donor cycles in traditional IVF centers around the world, as it was reported in Fertility and Sterility in 2008 (Nagy et al, FS, 2008), 17 of the 20 recipients achieved live birth using vitrified donor eggs. Later that same year, RBA created one of the world’s first independent, fully inventoried frozen donor egg banks. Based on the success of its own egg bank, in 2010, RBA established My Egg Bank North America (MEB-NA), a network of high quality infertility centers providing frozen donor egg bank services to patients across the United States and Canada.
