Advances in assisted reproduction would benefit many aspects of medicine and biological research ranging from production of transgenic animals to human infertility treatment.
This research aims to develop and prove the worthiness of a microscale instrument that can integrate several in vitro reproductive procedures: oocyte maturation (IVM) fertilization (IVF), and embryo culture (EC). The two main objectives are developing the miniature systems and testing their merit. Many components of successful human IVF procedures today are derived from animal studies, thus all testing will be done with animal oocytes and embryos. Current in vitro systems have stationary medium of constant composition. The proposed micro scale fluidic systems would precisely control the flow of medium past oocytes/embryos tailor the composition of the medium to precisely mimic physiological conditions, and enable automated collection of medium for analysis. A gradually changing medium from a composition for maturation to one for fertilization, to a sequence for embryo culture mimics the slowly changing environment an oocyte experiences in vivo. The precise control of the proposed system avoids the abrupt environmental changes that accompany conventional sequential media processes and should improve IVM. IVF and EC efficiencies.
Miniature fluidic systems for in vitro embryo production will reduce costs. may increase reproduction efficiencies and will lead to microscale techniques to analyze preimplantation embryos. The systems will benefit at least three industries: transgenic animal production companies. human IVF clinics. and commercial livestock breeders. The devices are also the forerunners of devices with built-in microanalysis instruments that would have additional impact in basic biological research and future biotech production.
