Selection of high-quality sperm with thousands of parallel channels

Simchi, Mohammad; Riordon, Jason; You, Jae Bem; Wang, Yihe; Xiao, Sa; Lagunov, Alexander; Hannam, Thomas; Jarvi, Keith; Nosrati, Reza; Sinton, David

doi:10.1039/d0lc01182g

Cited by 18 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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“…The device is simple in operation and scalable, selecting up to 41% of healthy sperm directly from the semen sample. This improvement in selection throughput is significant, outperforming previously developed microfluidic technologies [ 46–49 ] by at least 38% to provide a sufficient volume (≈500 µL) and number (>800 000) of high‐quality sperm within under 15 min for droplet‐based IVF and IUI. The performance of the device is evaluated through experiments with bull and human samples, selecting sperm with up to 65% improvement in both DNA integrity and morphology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…This later effect could be overcome by using mass manufacturing techniques such as plastic injection molding which are common in the biomedical industry. Taken together, the sperm syringe provides a high-throughput approach for sperm selection, considerably outperforming conventional clinical practices and previously developed microfluidic methods [46][47][48][49] (Table S2, Supporting Information). The device selects over 800 000 sperm in 500 µL that can be applied directly for IUI and droplet-based IVF, or for sperm selection prior to ICSI.…”

Section: Sperm Syringe Selection Throughputmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Using diluted semen samples with an average concentration of 11.6 million per mL, 500 µL of selected sperm at a concentration of 3.2 million per mL was collected from the selection chamber (Figure 6). It is noteworthy that the number (1 600 000) and volume of selected sperm from the device is more than sufficient to perform five cycles of droplet-based IVF or one cycle of IUI, avoiding a major limitation of other microfluidic sperm selection technologies [46][47][48][49] that only collect a small volume or number of sperm (Table S2, Supporting Information).…”

Section: Application To Human Spermmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[32][33][34][35] Microfluidic platforms have been developed to assist infertility diagnosis and treatment, including devices for home-based semen analysis, [36][37][38][39] understanding sperm swimming behavior, [40][41][42][43][44] and selecting high-quality sperm. [45][46][47] With respect to sperm selection, these platforms use passive strategies based on sperm motility [48][49][50] or active strategies using flow, [45,51] chemical gradient, [52,53] or acoustic forces [54] to select high-quality sperm. Despite significant improvement in microfluidic sperm selection devices over the past two decades, implementation and translation of these technologies into clinical settings has been slow, mainly due to the lack of scalable microfabrication opportunities and complexity in operation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These microfluidic devices fail to replicate the 3D and highly parallelized selection events in the female reproductive tract, resulting in a trade‐off between the number and DNA quality of selected sperm (i.e., high sperm count at the expense of low DNA quality or vice versa). [ 46 ] The inherent limitations of the current microfabrication methods (based on either lithography or milling techniques) [ 56,57 ] make it impractical to layer 2D planar microstructures and form 3D selection geometries. Moreover, these microfabrication methods are not suitable for mass production and commercialization due to the cost and complexity of the processes involved.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sperm Syringe: 3D Sorting Platform for Assisted Reproduction

Parast

O'Bryan

Nosrati

2022

Adv Materials Technologies

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sperm injection (ICSI), [3] in vitro fertilization (IVF), [4] and intrauterine insemination (IUI). [5] In ICSI, as the most invasive method, an individual sperm is selected and injected directly into an egg. In IVF or IUI, a subpopulation of pre-selected sperm is introduced close to the egg to achieve fertilization. [3][4][5] The quality of selected sperm is crucial to ART, contributing significantly to the treatment success rate, live-birth rate, and offspring health. [6] However, the current clinical sperm selection practices are highly manual, subjective, and prone to operator errors, resulting in a suboptimal ART success rate, stagnating at ≈33% per cycle over the past 30 years. [7,8] The inherent challenge is to mimic the highly parallelized and 3D selection process in vivo that enables a single-cell level sorting mechanism within a relatively short timeframe. [9] Specifically, the 3D folded structure of the female reproductive tract breaks down the initial semen volume (≈1-4 mL) into a few microliters per selection event within the folded epithelial of the fallopian tube. These subfractioning events can process hundreds of millions of sperm in just a few hours. [10] Current clinical practices, however, only provide a 2D bulk scale selection alternative.Density gradient centrifugation (DGC) [11] and swim-up [12,13] are the most commonly used methods for human sperm selection in fertility clinics. In swim-up assay (SU), highly motile sperm are selected based on their ability to swim upward from the raw semen sediment into a fresh sperm media, where they are collected after ≈60 min. This method is not applicable in the case of asthenozoospermia (poor sperm motility). [14] In DGC, human sperm are separated based on their density by being forced to cross a viscosity gradient via centrifugation force that could cause sperm DNA damage and alter sperm morphology and function. [11,15] The sperm preparation method that is used in clinics is mainly chosen based on the count and motility of sperm in the human semen sample. [9] Both SU and DGC are time consuming (30-60 min), require multiple preparation steps, depend on the clinician expertise, and differ significantly from the natural selection process in vivo. [16] Moreover, the relatively long processing time of these methods and the low percentage of recovered sperm in the swim-up method (less than 20%) have considerably restricted the clinical workflow, especially Selection of high-quality sperm is crucial to assisted reproduction. However, conventional clinical methods for sperm selection are manual and prone to operator errors. This article presents 'sperm syringe', a scalable technology that mimics the highly parallelized 3D selection process in vivo via a 3D network of 560 microchannels to select high-quality sperm. Sperm syringe retrieves more than 41% of healthy sperm from the initial sperm sample in under 15 min, providing a sufficient volume (≈500 µL) and number (1,600,000) of high-quality sperm for fertility treatments. Experiments with bull and human sper...

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%