My Experience with Reprotech

This is a bit of a niche post (and completely un-sponsored), but I’ve talked to a surprising number of people who have needed help with this issue. Here’s hoping we can help a few more! Reprotech is a Cryo-Storage company that has developed a reputation in the TTC community for being notoriously difficult to work with. Rigorous testing and massive fees were (at least at one time) required in order to get donor embryos released from the facility. However, in the past year or so, they seem to have been in the process of overhauling this process, and it may have changed radically since others have gone through it. I wrote the following summary after we completed the transfer of ownership in January of 2020 - Hopefully this will provide some insight to people who are just starting the process.

To get our embryos sent from Reprotech to our fertility clinic, we had to do the following:

• Provide a complete copy of our donation contract. Many places (including our clinic) will accept a letter from your lawyer, confirming that the contract between donor and recipient was executed. However, they wanted to see the full (signed) document.

• Provide confirmation from our clinic that the embryos would be accepted under "quarantine.” Because our donors created the embryos for personal use, they weren't initially screened according to FDA donor guidelines. Reprotech’s lab provides in-house testing for $2700, and at one point they required this testing to be done prior to releasing the embryos. However, our clinic was willing to perform the transfer after we signed a release - and considering both contributors had to be tested for transmissible diseases during that initial IVF cycle, we don’t feel that there is any additional risk. Once you wrap your mind around the scary word “quarantine," this step is pretty straightforward.

• Complete and notarize paperwork establishing us as the new owners. This was comprised of one Docusign form, and 3 additional multi-page documents. Nothing too terrible - although after this paperwork, plus the paperwork from our clinic, and the contract itself… let’s just say we were on a first-name basis with the notary at our bank!

• Pay a $200 administrative fee. They accepted my payment via credit card over the phone. Easy peasy, even if it wasn't totally clear what exactly that $200 was for.

While it did still feel like there were some unnecessary hoops to jump through, the representative I worked with was very responsive and genuinely seemed to want to help. Start to finish the process took just over a month, and our embryos were shipped to our clinic a few weeks after that. Yay! Shipping itself was super straightforward. We paid $276, which is by far the lowest rate I have seen for shipping genetic material, and they went out on a regularly scheduled route the next day. There was some unanticipated stress over a trucking route being closed due to ice (there was a terrifying 24 hour period where it wasn’t clear which truck / route our embryos had been redirected to), but that was clearly just a fluke. All in all, it felt clear that this company was committed to a good-faith approach to helping its users. While the process wasn’t yet perfect, it was clearly greatly improved, and I’m hopeful that future recipients will have an even easier time.

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Are you a donor or recipient of genetic material stored at Reprotech? What was your experience?