Patients with repeated implantation failures or poor embryo quality may benefit from embryo culture using the co-culture technique; growth factors secreted by co-culture cells may act as survival factors. Autologous endometrial co-culture has been suggested as a safe alternative to animal cells for co-culture of human embryos. However, the technique is fairly labour intensive and its effectiven...

BACKGROUND Sperm of poor quality can negatively affect embryo development to the blastocyst stage. The aim of this comparative prospective randomized study was to evaluate the role of an intracytoplasmic morphologically selected sperm injection (IMSI) in the same infertile couples included in the programme of intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) due to their indications of male infertility w...

Accessory sperm number and its relationship to fertilization and embryo quality was evaluated in cattle after nonsurgical recovery of ova or embryos 6 d after insemination. Efforts to alter accessory sperm number per ovum included 1) blockage of retrograde sperm loss at insemination using a modified insemination device, 2) elevated sperm number per inseminate (40 x 10(6) vs 20 x 10(6], and 3) a...

Few teleost fishes incubate embryos out of water, but the oxygen-rich terrestrial environment could provide advantages for early growth and development. We tested the hypothesis that embryonic oxygen uptake is limited in aquatic environments relative to air using the self-fertilizing amphibious mangrove rivulus, Kryptolebias marmoratus, which typically inhabits hypoxic, water-filled crab burrow...

background: embryo morphology has been proposed as an alternative marker of chromosomal status. the objective of this retrospective cohort study was to investigate the association between the chromosomal status on day 3 of embryo development and blastocyst morphology.embryo morphology has been proposed as an alternative marker of chromosomal status. the objective of this retrospective cohort st...

Y‑27632 is a specific inhibitor of Rho‑associated protein kinases (ROCKs), which are downstream effectors of Rho GTPase. The present study aimed to determine the effect of the specific ROCK inhibitor, Y‑27632, on fresh human embryos and on single blastomeres obtained from discarded human embryos. A total of 784 poor‑quality embryos were included, of which 526 were allocated to blastocyst cultur...

Purpose: To assess if consecutive oocyte retrieval (OR) of more than three times for poor ovarian responders could be an effective method to obtain competent embryos becoming babies.

Cathepsin B, a lysosomal cysteine protease of the papain family, has recently been implicated in the quality and developmental competence of bovine preimplantation embryos. In this study, to determine whether inhibition of cathepsin B activity can improve porcine oocyte maturation and early embryo developmental competence, we supplemented in vitro maturation or embryo culture media with E-64, a...