I-Corps: Noninvasive Embryo Selection Technique

Texas Tech University Health Science Center, Lubbock TX

Investigators

Abstract

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project will improve outcomes of assisted reproductive technologies by allowing a more effective method to select high quality embryos to transfer. Incorporating embryo transfer into livestock breeding programs to maximize superior genetic traits can be economically advantageous to producers. However, the only currently available means to select which embryo to transfer is subjective, invasive or expensive. As most livestock producers cannot justify the cost of these available methods into their programs, the transfer of dead and low quality embryos into recipients, which will never establish a pregnancy, is common. The technology developed with this project involves a noninvasive, cost-effective and quantitative method to select embryo viability and quality. Using this technology to select which embryo to transfer will result in increased pregnancy rates after embryo transfer. This technology will reduce costs spent on transferring non-viable embryos and caring for non-pregnant recipient animals. This technology also provides the only published method to select which embryos have survived cryopreservation. This I-Corps project can increase the efficiency of embryo transfer and cryopreservation of mammalian embryos in a livestock production setting. This I-Corps project investigates the commercial potential of research demonstrating early embryo growth potential can be determined by an embryos specific gravity. This I-Corps technology measures the rate of an embryos descent through a media filled chamber. The embryos descent rate provides insight to intracellular properties based on density of intracellular constituents, which cannot be estimated through standard embryo selection techniques. For example, a non-viable embryo has lost the ability of its membrane to regulate what enters and exits the cell. The cell will then move towards equilibrium with the media and water will enter the cell. This increases the cellular density of the dead embryo, and results in a faster descent time than the descent time of a live embryo. Studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of this technology to distinguish live from dead embryos in mouse zygotes, mouse cryopreserved blastocysts and cryopreserved sheep blastocysts. Additional studies have demonstrated the technology does not harm embryos, as embryos continue development and establish healthy pregnancies after measured with the specific gravity device.