BACKGROUND The complexity of fertilization failure during assisted reproductive technologies (ART) is often under-appreciated, as this failure can occur at any number of essential mechanistic and cellular events. Importantly, successful fertilization is heavily dependent upon inherent qualities of the oocytes, and thus reliant upon fidelity of oocyte maturation. METHODS Pubmed and medline wer...

The serpin peptidase inhibitor, clade E, member 2 (SERPINE2) inhibits urokinase-type plasminogen activator (PLAU) and tissue-type plasminogen activator. Higher SERPINE2 expression levels were detected in cumulus cells of human immature oocytes than in those of mature oocytes. The objective of this study was to evaluate whether high SERPINE2 levels in cumulus cells are associated with oocyte imm...

INTRODUCTION Today, oocyte donation has become well established, giving rise to thousands of children born worldwide annually. The introduction of oocyte cryopreservation through vitrification allows the introduction of egg banking, improving the efficiency and comfort of oocyte donation. Moreover, the vitrification technique can now enable autologous donation of oocytes to prevent future infer...

BACKGROUND The LH surge promotes ovulation via activation of multiple signaling networks in the ovarian follicle. Studies in animal models have shown the importance of LH-induced activation of the epidermal growth factor (EGF)signaling network in critical peri-ovulatory events. We investigated the biological significance of regulatory mechanisms mediated by EGF-like growth factors during LH sti...

Ovariectomy and ovarian tissue cryopreservation has the potential to preserve the natural fertility of cancer patients prior to sterilizing chemo- and radiotherapies. Ovarian tissue cryopreservation with the conventional slow-freezing method has yielded limited success, partly because of oocyte loss during freeze-thaw and subsequent transplant. Based on the high-efficiency vitrification Cryotop...

Objective Currently, there is no agreement on the optimal urinary derived human chorionic gonadotropin (u-hCG) dose requirement for initiating final oocyte maturation prior to oocyte collection in in vitro fertilization (IVF), but doses that range from 2500- 15000 IU have been used. We intended to determine whether low dose u-hCG was effective for oocyte maturation in IVF/intracytoplasmic sperm...

BACKGROUND Laboratory animals are commonly used for evaluating the physiological properties of the mammalian ovarian follicle and the enclosed oocyte. The use of different species to determine the morphological relationship between the follicle and oocyte has led to a recognizable pattern of follicular stages, but differences in follicle size, oocyte diameter and granulosa cell proliferation ar...

Background: Recent animal studies demonstrated that regulating the microRNA (miRNA) in granulosa cells (GCs) modulates the meiotic competence of oocytes. However, the difference in expression profiles of miRNAs in human GCs according to the maturity of the oocyte still remains to be elucidated. Objective: This observational study investigated whether the miRNA profile of human GCs differs accor...