Background: Oocyte in vitro maturation success rate is still low in compareision to oocyte in vivo maturation. Thus prediction and improvement of oocyte competency are two critical issues in assisted reproductive technology. New insights into oocyte-cumulus cell regulatory loop may assist our optimization of in vitro maturation technique. Maturation and developmental competency of cumulus oocyt...

background: mammalian oocytes are exposed to a mixture of many different growth factors and cytokines which provides an optimized microenvironment for oocyte maturation. in the lack of this natural microenvironment in vitro the quality of oocyte and embryos appears to be suboptimal. objective: this study was undertaken to investigate the effects of egf and lif on in vitro maturation fertilizati...

Background: The period of growth spurt is an important factor in helping to optimize the outcome orthodontic treatment and can be determined through indicators cervical vertebral maturation stage dental maturation. According Bacetti, Cervical Vertebral Maturation Stage (CVMS) a method determine which categorized stages (CS) one six using lateral cephalograms. Demirjian, canine assessment used s...

objective: retinoids are recognized as important regulators of cell differention and tissue function. previous studies, performed both in vivo and in vitro, indicate that retinoids influence several reproductive events. in this study, we investigated the effect of all-trans retinoic acid (t-ra) on maturation and fertilization rate of immature oocytes (germinal vesicle). materials and methods: g...

introduction: studies have shown that opiates cause disorders in fertilization and accessory reproductive glands in animals. on the other hand studies have shown important role of glycoconjugates in sperm epididymal maturation. lectins can detect glycoconjugates with specific terminal glucose molecules. therefore this study was conducted to assess the possible effects of opiates on these import...

objective: the aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of protein and dna components of toxoplasma gondii on maturation of dendritic cells and their efficiency in il-12 production and proliferation of t cells. materials and methods: for dc generation, bone marrow cells were cultured in the presence of gm-csf and il-4 for 5 days. tumor lysate and protein or dna components of toxo...

background: dendritic cells (dc) induce tumor or pathogen-specific t cell responses in humans. several laboratories have developed culture systems, including maturation factors for human dc from peripheral blood monocytes. we comprehensively compared standard maturation stimulus, an autologous monocyte-conditioned medium (mcm), with heparin for their ability to promote uniformly mature dc that ...