Assessment of the developmental potential of oocytes and embryos using biodynamic imaging

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 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): For this basic research grant proposal the long-term objective is to develop a non-invasive method to objectively assess the quality of oocytes and embryos. The immediate goal is to determine whether subcellular motility can be used as a biomarker to evaluate viability using the pig as a model. Assisted reproductive technologies are powerful tools for treating infertility; unfortunately, the success rate of such technologies is rather low. A major reason responsible for the low efficiency is the lack of methods to reliably assess the developmental potential of oocytes and embryos. Therefore, a non-invasive method that would ensure the selection of only the best oocytes for in vitro fertilization or the highest quality embryos for transfer into surrogates would be highly desirable. Our central hypothesis is that intracellular motion provides a sensitive and specific suite of biomarkers that, when detected by Biodynamic Imaging, can predict developmental potential. To address this hypothesis three specific aims are proposed. Aim 1 is to determine whether intracellular motion of oocytes is an indicator of their viability. Aim 2 is to define the correlation between subcellulr motion of embryos and their developmental competence. Aim 3 is to establish whether successful fertilization can be identified by monitoring motion in the ooplasm following gamete fusion using Biodynamic Imaging. Accomplishing these aims will lead to the development of a much-needed method for the selection of the best oocytes and embryos that has important applications in the field of assisted reproduction.