Women may soon be able to prolong their childbearing years by taking a pill to delay menopause, scientists said yesterday.

Fertility expert Robert Winston told the Cheltenham science festival yesterday that techniques might be developed within a decade to help extend the life of women's eggs.

"We think we have identified a protein which might be able to be used to prolong the life of those eggs," he said. "Women are much more healthy than they were before and the period before menopause could be extended without risk," he said. Lord Winston said more couples were delaying having babies leading to problems with fertility. "What we are seeing is increasingly a society where women are ... getting educated and careers in society but their biology is working against them," he said.

"In the time you've been listening to me speaking, every woman of child-bearing age in the audience will have lost two eggs," he said, adding: "By contrast, I will have made 150,000 new sperm."

Science could help extend the length of life of eggs in the ovaries, he said. "We might be able to do that in the next decade or so. We might be able to use proteins to protect the eggs."