Non‐Invasive Assessment of the Embryo Viability via the Analysis of the Culture Media

Infertility in recent years is a growing public health issue throughout the developed world. Assisted reproductive techniques, especially in vitro fertilization, have the poten‐ tial to partially overcome the low natural reproductive ratio. Nowadays, single embryo transfer gains grounds in clinical practice, urging the development of more reliable methods for selecting the best embryo. In the traditional clinical practice, embryos are selected for transfer based on morphological evaluation. In vitro culturing of embryos also provides a very important material for further non‐invasive evaluation by means of examining a biomarker in the spent culture medium (SEC). Current measure methods concentrate on the metabolomic activity of the developing embryos none compounds. These studies are mainly utilizing the tools of modern analytics and proteomics. In a paper published by Montskó et al. in 2015, the alpha‐1 chain of the human haptoglobin molecule was described as a quantitative biomarker of embryo viability. In a series of retrospective, blind experiments achieved more than 50% success rate. This chapter sum‐ marizes the currently available metabolomic and proteomic approaches as the non‐inva‐ sive molecular assessment of embryo viability.