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

 描述(由申请人提供)：对于这项基础研究资助计划，长期目标是开发一种非侵入性的方法来客观地评估卵母细胞和胚胎的质量。目前的目标是以猪为模型，确定亚细胞运动性是否可以作为评估生存能力的生物标记物。辅助生殖技术是治疗不孕不育的有力工具；不幸的是，这种技术的成功率相当低。效率低的一个主要原因是缺乏可靠地评估卵母细胞和胚胎发育潜力的方法。因此，一种确保只选择最好的卵母细胞进行体外受精或选择最高质量的胚胎移植到替代物中的非侵入性方法将是非常可取的。我们的中心假设是，细胞内运动提供了一套敏感和特定的生物标志物，当生物动力学成像检测到这些生物标志物时，可以预测发育潜力。为了解决这一假设，本文提出了三个具体目标。目的1是确定卵母细胞的细胞内运动是否是其存活率的一个指标。目的2确定胚胎亚细胞运动与其发育能力之间的关系。目的3是确定是否可以通过生物动力学成像监测配子融合后卵质中的运动来识别成功的受精。实现这些目标将导致开发一种急需的方法来选择最好的卵母细胞和胚胎，该方法在辅助生殖领域具有重要的应用。

 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.