Nehemiah Alvarez
Old Dominion University, VA·Biology
Some women are infertile because their eggs (oocytes) stop developing partway through meiosis, the special cell division that makes eggs, or just after fertilization. These arrests are caused by inherited genetic variants, and there is currently no treatment.
- Fields
Biology
Genetics
Biochemistry
- Topics
oocyte
female infertility
meiosis
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Aug 2026
What they work on
- Determine how different RNA modifications, chemical changes built into synthetic mRNA, affect the stability and translation of injected Patl2 mRNA in mouse oocytes.
- Test whether microinjecting Patl2 mRNA into eggs from Patl2 knockout mice, which fail to mature, restores oocyte maturation and fertilization.
- Assess whether RNA-rescued oocytes from Patl2-deficient mice can develop and lead to live births, as a model for treating female infertility caused by oocyte arrest.
More about the research
One possible fix is mRNA therapy: injecting a healthy copy of the faulty gene's messenger RNA into the egg so the egg can make the missing protein. mRNA therapies are already used in medicine, for example in COVID-19 vaccines. Two recent studies produced early embryos this way from eggs of affected women, but the approach needs careful testing before it can become a fertility treatment.
Why it matters
Women whose eggs arrest during maturation because of genetic variants currently have no treatment options. By showing how chemically modified mRNA behaves inside eggs and whether it can rescue maturation in mice, this work could inform the design of RNA therapies. Such therapies might one day be used during assisted reproduction to restore fertility in these patients.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Pavla Brachova
Old Dominion University, VA·Biology
Determine how inosine, a chemical modification in the coding region of mRNA, affects translation in oocytes, including whether it causes amino acid substitutions, using proteomics and RNA-sequencing approaches.
Soni Lacefield
Dartmouth College, NH·Genetics
Adapt HyperTRIBE, which tags an RNA-binding protein so it marks the RNAs it contacts, to identify the direct mRNA targets of PATL2, PUM1 and PUM2 in mouse oocytes and early embryos, and test how loss of one protein shifts the others' targets.
Adam Krieg
Oregon Health & Science University, OR·Physiology
Test whether priming macaques of advanced reproductive age or with poor ovarian response with anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) improves their response to gonadotropin stimulation and IVF outcomes.
The school
Old Dominion University: 8 labs on PI Pages, $76M a year on research, 143 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.