Study of automated embryo manipulation using dynamic microarray: Trapping, culture and collection

Abstract

Embryo handling is an extremely important fundamental technique in reproductive technology and other related life science discipline. The handling usually requires an artisanal operation that uses a glass-made capillary tube to suck in / out the embryo by applying external pressure with mouth or pipetting, to move it one to another environment and to redeliver into the womb. Because of the delicate operations, it is difficult to obtain quantitative result through the experiments. It is therefore an automatic embryo handling system has been highly desired to obtain stable quantitative results, and to reduce the stress for the operators. In this paper, we proposed and developed an automated embryo culture device, which can make an array of the embryos, culture them to be the blastocyst stage, and collect the blastocyst using the dynamic microarray format that we had studied previously. We preliminary examined the three functions of trapping, culture, and release using a mouse embryo as a sample. As a result, the mouse embryos are successfully trapped and released, whereas the efficiency of the in-device embryo culture was less comparable than the conventional dish culture. The culture stage still needs optimization for embryos, however the concept of embryo manipulation was proofed successfully. © 2009 The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan.