IVF News

Tuesday 18th May, 2021. 3PM EST/ 8PM GMT / 9PM CET  

A webinar about getting it right on social media! Managing your online reputation, your clinic's promotion and your fertility website.

Moderators: Serena H. Chen and IVF Babble’s Tracey Bambrough

With Giles Palmer, Ivf.net's Thomas Elliott and Vaquera’s Chris Kincade

Presenters:
“Modernizing Medicine” Dr. Lowell Ku
“It’s Not Too Late to Get on Social Media: Five Action Steps to Get Started” Dr. Lora Shahine
“Breaking Barriers of Access to Care and Addressing Racial Bias in Social Media” Dr. Cindy Duke
"It's Personal" Dr. Roohi Jeelani 
"Humour and the Infertility Journey" Jennifer "Jay" Palumbo
"Closing Communication Gaps in Healthcare" Dr. Natalie Crawford
"Embryo Babysitter" Vivian Kimble.

VIEW HERE

Tuesday 11th May, 2021. 3PM EST/ 8PM GMT / 9PM CET 

Moderators: Prof. Susana Chuva de Sousa Lopes and Prof. David Albertini

"Brave New Lab-An Introduction to the Latest Developments"
Prof. David Albertini

"Symmetry Breaking in the Human Embryo"
Bailey Weatherbee

"In vitro Culture of Post-implantation Embryos"
and "Ex utero Mouse Embryogenesis from Pre-gastrulation to Advanced Organogenesis"
Alejandro Aguilera Castrejon

VIEW HERE

Human blastocysts have been created in a simple, efficient way from stem cells grown in a lab.  

Scientists at the University of Exeter's Living Systems Institute, in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Cambridge, have developed a method to organise lab-grown stem cells into a model of a blastocyst to recreate the first stage of human embryo development.

Professor Austin Smith, director of the Living Systems Institute, said: 'Finding that stem cells can create all the elements of an early embryo is a revelation. This is quite remarkable and unlocks exciting possibilities for learning about the human embryo.'

Presently, natural human embryos are not readily available for research. There is a legal ban on creating or culturing them in the laboratory beyond 14 days, known as the '14-day rule'. This has greatly limited researchers' ability to learn and understand the earliest biological beginnings of humans. To date, researchers have relied upon limited human embryo donations or animal models, primarily mice.

Published in Cell Stem Cell, the team showed how they arranged the stem cells into clusters and briefly introduced two molecules known to influence cells in early development. They found that 80 percent of the clusters organised themselves after three days into structures that look curiously like the blastocyst stage of an embryo – a ball of around 200 cells formed from the fertilised egg after six days. The team further showed that these curious clusters have the same active genes as a natural embryo.

The study, directed by Dr Ge Guo, also from the University of Exeter's Living Systems Institute, said the new technique provides 'for the first time, a reliable system to study early development in humans without using embryos'.

This method has the potential to be used by researchers from around the world to investigate the early stages of development, which to date has not been possible.

The next step for the researchers is to understand how to develop the artificial blastocysts beyond the early stage, and to study the critical period when an embryo implants into the womb and how it stays implanted. Miscarriage occurs in approximately one in eight pregnancies, of which three in every four happen during the first 12 weeks.

In addition, the authors have speculated that it may lead to a better understanding of embryo development and help the approximate one in seven couples who suffer from infertility.

SOURCES & REFERENCES

Oocytes mature differently in older women, in a process that could contribute to a decrease in fertility, a study from scientists in Barcelona, Spain has shown. 

Scientists found that the activity of genes involved in chromosome segregation increased in oocytes progressively with age, while the activity of genes involved in mitochondrial metabolism decreased. Chromosome segregation is needed for cells to divide and multiply, and for RNA processing, while mitochondrial metabolism is essential for cell survival as mitochondria generate the energy needed for all cellular processes.

'Here we show that the final step of oocyte maturation itself might be negatively affected by age, which is critical for reproduction because [the oocyte] provides the material early embryos need to develop normally and survive,' Professor Bernhard Payer, co-author of the study, told Science Daily. 

Researchers analysed 72 oocytes at different stages of maturity from 37 donors aged 18 to 43. They looked at the RNA molecules within each cell, known as the transcriptome, to see which genes show different levels of activity in oocytes from women of different ages. The findings were published in the journal Aging Cell.

Age-related changes to the transcriptome of oocytes were found to mostly occur in the final stage of development of the cell, when culturing in vitro. This finding reveals a potential pathway by which age could have an impact on the quality of oocytes, and why fertility is seen to decrease with age in women. 

Further analysis revealed a number of genes that regulate the transcription of other genes could be behind these differences in the transcriptome of oocytes from women of different ages, and could be the focus of further research in this area. Transcription is the process of copying a segment of DNA into RNA. The transcribed segments then direct the synthesis of proteins.

The researchers also reported that higher body mass index (BMI) was found to impact oocyte development. Here however, the genetic activity differed in immature oocytes between women with different BMI. Thus it is likely BMI influences fertility through an alternate mechanism compared to the fertility decline caused by age. Women in the study mostly had a BMI that was normal or in the overweight category, with one donor obese and one donor underweight. As only one egg donor in the study was underweight, no conclusions could be drawn as to the effect of reduced BMI on egg quality.  

The authors concluded that their work may serve as a resource for the development of future diagnostic tools to assess oocyte quality.

SOURCES & REFERENCES

Early embryonic germ cells, which fail to develop into sperm cells, may later become testicular cancer cells, a study in mice has shown.

During embryonic development, germ cells in the embryo have the ability to develop into any cell type, a state known as pluripotency. However, these cells should develop into either sperm cells or egg cells during sex determination. Researchers at the Baylor Institute of Medicine, Houston, Texas have demonstrated that errors in this process can lead to pluripotency carrying on into puberty, allowing some of these cells to become cancerous.

'Previous work from our lab and others indicated that defects in this sex-specific switch may play a central role in facilitating the initiation of testicular germ cell tumours,' said Dr Jason Heaney who led the work. He continued: 'In this study, we set out to test whether testicular germ cell tumours arise from germ cells that do not begin the sex-specific differentiation process and retain features of pluripotent cells.'

Germ cells typically lose their pluripotency ability as the embryo develops and they become able to only form sex cells. Sperm cells are formed in males and egg cells are formed in females, which is known as sex determination.

Testicular cancer is caused by testicular germ cell tumours in 95 percent of cases, which typically occurs after puberty. The formation of sperm cells during male sex determination happens at the same time cancer cells that form testicular germ cell tumours can develop.

The researchers used a strain of mouse that spontaneously develops germ cell tumours and have shown that a gene called NANOS2 is important for ensuring that embryonic germ cells form into mature sperm cells. They realised that germ cells that became cancerous in the mice's testes lacked NANOS2 and restoring the gene enabled the cells to mature, stopping them from becoming cancerous.

'NANOS2 plays a key role in the sex-specific development of embryonic germ cells by suppressing the female (egg) fate and promoting the male (sperm) fate,' Dr Heaney explained.

Publishing their findings in Development, even though it is currently unknown what role NANOS2 plays in the development of human testicular germ cell tumours, the team hope that their discovery about how NANOS2 controls cell fate during sex determination in mice will pave the way for preventing and treating testicular cancer in the future.

Dr Heaney said: 'Our work reveals changes in gene expression when germ cells transform into cancer cells that suggest alterations in metabolism and cell division, which could be used for targeted therapies.'

SOURCES & REFERENCES

Breast cancer susceptibility genes (BRCA1 and BRCA2) influence the length of some women's fertile period, according to a global meta-analysis.

There have been conflicting results from studies of how BRCA mutations influence anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) levels, which is used as an indicator of egg reserves. While some have found that the BRCA1 mutation lower AMH levels, others have failed to reproduce this. Now, an international group of scientists including some from Yale School of Medicine, Connecticut, report that BRCA1 but not BRCA2 mutations reduce AMH levels.

Professor Kutluk Oktay, director of Laboratory of Molecular Reproduction and Fertility Preservation at Yale, and study leader, said, 'These results can translate into a ten-year shortening of reproductive life period in these women, which means that women with BRCA mutations should be vigilant about completing childbearing early and/or considering fertility preservation if delaying childbearing.' 

Professor Oktay and colleagues investigated a large cohort of women with known BRCA status. They used five published datasets from which they were able to analyse the data from 824 women for the cohort study. Of these, 246 carried a BRCA1 and/or BRCA2 mutation while 578 were negative. The majority of the BRCA mutation carriers also had breast cancer. 

The average level of AMH in the serum of BRCA1/2 carriers was 2.04 ng/mL versus 3.36 ng/mL in noncarriers. This was significantly lower after adjusting for age, smoking status, and oral contraceptive use. However, while the mean level of AMH was significantly lower in the women with just BRCA1 mutations versus controls, the same was not true for BRCA2 carriers. 

'Although this meta-analysis could not demonstrate lower AMH levels in BRCA2 mutation carriers, this could be due to smaller sample size for the BRCA2 population,' Professor Oktay added. 

Additionally, the results of this analysis may be influenced by the fact that most of the women with BRCA mutations also had breast cancer. Importantly, chemotherapy can also influence ovarian reserve. Therefore, further analyses in woman with BRCA mutations without breast cancer must be conducted.

Professor Oktay concluded, 'Cancer is a disease of ageing and these studies will not only help with future fertility counselling for women carrying DNA repair gene mutations but... may also unravel the mechanisms of ageing in general.'

The study was published in Journal of Clinical Oncology.

SOURCES & REFERENCES

Why is it important for men to undergo check-ups of their semen? Because nowadays 1 in 6 couples have fertility issues. And more than 4.000 IVF clinics worldwide agree on the fact that male infertility constitutes up to 50% of the infertility cases.

Microptic, a leading company in the field of semen analysis, has developed a new product in the current context in which sperm analysis is a more common lab test with an increasing demand: SCA SCOPE, the first totally automated lab equipment for human semen assessment.

The SCA SCOPE is an all-in-one device, linking up software with hardware of the best quality, that allows to work in optimal conditions. This equipment is smart and multi-patient, and it can be connected to a Laboratory Information System to improve traceability. In addition, the system is easy to use and capable of performing a spermiocytogram in less than 4 minutes.

For more information on SCA SCOPE, visit: www.scascope.com

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Limited Seats - What are you waiting for?

350+ Candidates have been trained so far across the globe

Course Name- Basic to Advanced Clinical Andrology , IUI , Reproductive Ultrasound & QA/QC

6th Edition Starting from 7th May 2021

8 weeks certified online Hybrid ART training courses - First time in India Clinical & Embryology Academy of ART by i-Ceat

Tuesday 4th May, 2021. 3PM EST/ 8PM GMT / 9PM CET  

Moderators:

Dr. Peter Nagy & Dr. Dean Morbeck

Speakers:

"The ART of the Ovum Pick Up: Eggs Over Easy”
Dr. Brad Van Voorhis & Dr. Amy Sparks
Sponsored by Cook Medical

“How to Make your Patient's Day; Getting the Embryo Transfer Just Right”
Dr. Daniel B. Shapiro & Dr. Peter Nagy
Sponsored by Cook Medical

”Overview of the ASRM Embryo Transfer Simulator Program and Findings from the ASRM Embryo Transfer Certificate Course”
Dr. Richard H. Reindollar & Keith A. Ray

VIEW HERE