Sperm Olympics: Selecting 1 in 100,000 for Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection

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In North America, one in six couples experiences infertility - a 2-fold increase since 1992.**Assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) and**intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), require human intervention to manually select sperm** in the case of ICSI a single sperm. This manual process is expensive, inefficient, prone to**operator-error and largely random, resulting in sub-optimal pregnancy outcomes and**ultimately the health of offspring. No sperm selection method addresses this growing market**and medical need. In 2015 we discovered a distinct swimming mode that human sperm use to**navigate confined viscous regions of the female reproductive tract. We have formed a team of**male fertility, microfluidic engineering, and clinical experts to develop and clinically test a**microfluidic platform that leverages this natural swimming ability to select the highest quality**sperm cells for direct injection - the Sperm Olympics.