진학프로석·박사 채용 접수 플랫폼

Despite several technical improvements throughout the last decades, the average IVF success rate is #20-25% per cycle. Single blastocyst transfer progressively becomes the standard procedure, allowing better evaluation of embryo quality but not improving overall success rate yet. Most failures are attributed to aneuploidies, but PGT-A is not 100% predictive of embryo implantation. Altogether, we postulate that embryo culture in vitro is suboptimal, its improvement paving the way for enhanced embryo yield and developmental quality, ultimately reducing time-to-pregnancy.

Interestingly, embryos displaying a faster development yield better clinical outcomes than slower embryos. For instance, early compaction on day 3 or blastocyst expansion on day 5 versus day 6 have been reported to be relevant kinetic markers. However, day 4 has been surprisingly overlooked. Indeed, while morula compaction is known to be a good predictor of blastocyst formation, data on early blastulation on day 4 is scarce. It was recently demonstrated, on a small population, that early blastulation on day 4 could be a useful predictor of the quality of embryos and that early blastocyst transferred on day 4 could provide acceptable pregnancy rates. Those morphokinetic observations are a great opportunity to design new embryo culture conditions aiming at increasing developmental speed of the embryo. In addition to morphokinetics, a companion test would refine our decision process for embryo selection.

Objectives

Our 2 main objectives are:

• • 1/ improve media formulation to improve developmental speed of all embryos
• • 2/ perform proteomics analysis of human embryos and spent culture media in order to identify predictive markers. Of note, we are focusing on human embryos since results clearly show that molecular differences with mouse or stem cell models call for more work on human embryos

Duration of contract : 13 months

Salary : € 2.800 gross per month