I-Corps: Microfluidic Corralling Technology for Progressive Sperm Separation

这个I-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发精子分离技术，以改善传统的辅助生殖技术，如体外受精（IVF）和卵胞浆内单精子注射（ICSI），这些技术缺乏效率（30-40%）。2019年全球试管婴儿市场规模约为183亿美元，预计到2027年将增至377亿美元。这一增长是基于过去十年不孕症的增长而预期的。因此，对IVF治疗和包括精子分离设施的需求也在增加。此外，配子处理被认为对整个IVF过程的修改至关重要，并且提取具有最佳质量的精子越来越引起人们的兴趣。虽然目前的方法能够提取纯度为30 - 40%的精子，但缺乏对精子活力的控制。此外，传统的方法是时间和劳动密集型的，它们对外力的天然需求使它们对精子的DNA含量有害。该项目将探索用于精子分离的微流控平台的翻译。该I-Corps项目将优化IVF微流控平台的关键步骤，即精子选择。最终，目标是最大限度地减少配子操作和与IVF相关的成本，以提高配子治疗和受精成功率。所提出的微流体技术是一种被动和有效的方法，可以将运动和健康的精子与死亡和异常细胞分离，从而使分离的样品显示出100%的运动性。此外，在该技术中对分离的精子的运动性的控制使其适合于配子治疗目的，这是IVF临床医生所期望的。所提出的设计是基于微室的微流体平台，其可以将进行性运动精子与不可存活的精子和碎片以及被困在微室中的非进行性精子分离。该平台在短时间内（10分钟）运行，无需任何预先样品制备。这个微流体平台可以为高通量收集用于辅助生殖技术的渐进精子提供一个简便的解决方案，同时仍然受益于微米级的物理学，使其适合基础研究。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of sperm separation technology to improve the conventional assisted reproductive technologies such as in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), which suffer from lack of efficiency (30-40%) efficiency. The global IVF market size was valued at around $18.3 billion in 2019 and is expected to rise to $37.7 billion by 2027. This growth is expected based on the growth of infertility during the last decade. Therefore, the demands for IVF treatments and including sperm separation utilities are increasing as well. Moreover, gamete treatments are considered crucial towards the modification of the whole IVF process, and extraction of the sperm with the best quality increasingly attracts interest. Although the current methods are able to extract sperm with the purity of 30 to 40%, the control on sperm motility is missing. In addition, traditional methods are time and labor-intensive, and their natural need for external force makes them hazardous to the DNA content of the sperm. The proposed project will explore translation of a microfluidic platform for sperm separation.This I-Corps project will optimize the key step of the IVF microfluidics platform, which is sperm selection. Ultimately, the goal is to minimize gamete manipulation and costs associated with IVF to improve gamete treatment and fertilization success. The proposed microfluidic technology is a passive and efficient way to separate motile and healthy sperm from dead and abnormal cells so that the separated sample exhibits 100% motility. Moreover, the control over the motility of the separated sperm in this technology makes it suitable for gamete treatment purposes, which is desired by IVF clinicians. The proposed design is a microchamber-based microfluidic platform that may separate progressive motile sperm from nonviable sperm and debris as well as trapped nonprogressive sperm in the microchambers. The platform is operated in a short period of time (10 min), without any prior sample preparation. This microfluidic platform may provide a facile solution for high-throughput collection of progressive sperm useful for assisted reproductive technologies while still benefiting from micron-scale physics that makes it suitable for fundamental research.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.