Oocyte cryopreservation is of great importance to the advancement of assisted reproductive medicine, maintenance of animal resources, and livestock management. However, the commonly used methods today for oocyte cryopreservation by either slow-freezing or conventional vitrification have inherent drawbacks. For example, the slow-freezing (freezing: the transition of liquid water into ice crystal) approach is associated with inevitable cell injury due to ice formation and slow- freezing induced cell dehydration. The unusually high CPA (cryoprotectant) concentration (4 - 7 M) required by the conventional vitrification (vitrification: the transition of liquid water into an amorphous, glassy state rather than ice crystal) method can result in significant metabolic and osmotic injury in living cells even in a short exposure time of only a few minutes. Presumably, it is these inherent drawbacks that are responsible for the dismal outcome of oocyte cryopreservation to date. The goal of the proposed research outlined in this R01 proposal is to develop new strategies for cell cryopreservation by microencapsulating the cells in alginate microcapsule to vitrify at a low-CPA (low and non- toxic amount of cryoprotectants, = 1.5 M) concentration. The proposed low-CPA vitrification approach combines all the advantages of the commonly used slow-freezing and conventional vitrification techniques today while avoiding all their shortcomings. Oocytes of the naturally bred (outbred) Peromyscus will be used as the biological model in this project so that the results obtained from the proposed studies can be more transferable to achieve low-CPA vitrification of oocytes of other naturally bred mammals including humans. In addition, Peromyscus embryos will be used as the benchmark biological model in this project to test the new approach in view of the fact that embryo cryopreservation has been successful in general. It is believed that the proposed research and the novel low-CPA vitrification approach will have a significant impact on the field of oocyte cryopreservation for assisted reproductive medicine, maintenance of animal resources, and livestock management.

Public Health Relevance

Oocyte cryopreservation is of great importance to the advancement of assisted reproductive medicine. We propose to develop a novel technology to achieve much improved performance for oocyte cryopreservation. This research will have a significant impact on the preservation of future fertility of women who may lose gonadal function because of exposure to environmental/occupational hazards or aggressive medical treatments such as extirpative surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01EB012108-03
Application #
8209010
Study Section
Biomaterials and Biointerfaces Study Section (BMBI)
Program Officer
Hunziker, Rosemarie
Project Start
2011-03-01
Project End
2014-12-31
Budget Start
2012-01-01
Budget End
2012-12-31
Support Year
3
Fiscal Year
2012
Total Cost
$343,476
Indirect Cost
$115,344
Name
Ohio State University
Department
Engineering (All Types)
Type
Schools of Engineering
DUNS #
832127323
City
Columbus
State
OH
Country
United States
Zip Code
43210
Liu, Xiaoli; Zhao, Gang; Chen, Zhongrong et al. (2018) Dual Suppression Effect of Magnetic Induction Heating and Microencapsulation on Ice Crystallization Enables Low-Cryoprotectant Vitrification of Stem Cell-Alginate Hydrogel Constructs. ACS Appl Mater Interfaces 10:16822-16835
Sun, Mingrui; Durkin, Patrick; Li, Jianrong et al. (2018) Label-Free On-Chip Selective Extraction of Cell-Aggregate-Laden Microcapsules from Oil into Aqueous Solution with Optical Sensor and Dielectrophoresis. ACS Sens 3:410-417
Zhang, Wujie; Choi, Jung K; He, Xiaoming (2017) Engineering Microvascularized 3D Tissue Using Alginate-Chitosan Microcapsules. J Biomater Tissue Eng 7:170-173
Zhang, Yuntian; Zhao, Gang; Chapal Hossain, S M et al. (2017) Modeling and experimental studies of enhanced cooling by medical gauze for cell cryopreservation by vitrification. Int J Heat Mass Transf 114:1-7
He, Xiaoming (2017) Microscale Biomaterials with Bioinspired Complexity of Early Embryo Development and in the Ovary for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine. ACS Biomater Sci Eng 3:2692-2701
Zhao, Gang; Zhang, Zhiguo; Zhang, Yuntian et al. (2017) A microfluidic perfusion approach for on-chip characterization of the transport properties of human oocytes. Lab Chip 17:1297-1305
Huang, Haishui; Zhao, Gang; Zhang, Yuntian et al. (2017) Predehydration and Ice Seeding in the Presence of Trehalose Enable Cell Cryopreservation. ACS Biomater Sci Eng 3:1758-1768
He, Xiaoming (2017) Microfluidic Encapsulation of Ovarian Follicles for 3D Culture. Ann Biomed Eng 45:1676-1684
He, Xiaoming; Toth, Thomas L (2017) In vitro culture of ovarian follicles from Peromyscus. Semin Cell Dev Biol 61:140-149
Zhao, Gang; Liu, Xiaoli; Zhu, Kaixuan et al. (2017) Hydrogel Encapsulation Facilitates Rapid-Cooling Cryopreservation of Stem Cell-Laden Core-Shell Microcapsules as Cell-Biomaterial Constructs. Adv Healthc Mater 6:

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