Refining IVF Culture: A Biphasic Approach to Embryo Development

“I have spent several decades investigating culture media formulations for bovine IVP embryo culture. I confess to being a true believer in designing media that, as closely as feasible, follows the pattern of substrate and ionic composition changes occurring within the reproductive tract. This puts me in the camp of arguing for biphasic media systems, where the composition of the media changes from a pre-compaction formulation to a formulation that better supports compaction and blastulation.

Nevertheless, the pros and cons of one-step versus biphasic media systems remain contentious, especially as evidence of superiority of one over the other is variable. For me, the key word in the previous sentence is “systems”. It’s not just a question of media formulation that is being assessed in these comparisons, it’s whether we can determine the impact of environmental changes that accompany a change in media (e.g. removal of dishes from incubator, sudden transition from one composition to another, etc.). Compared to a single formulation, we need to know if a seamless change in medium formulation, where no other culture conditions are impacted, causes a different response in growing embryos.

Microfluidic systems were proposed as an answer to seamless medium formulation change, but the development of practical systems that would be easily adopted has been achingly slow. That said, there are pockets of interest in developing such seamless systems – time will tell whether they enhance development or not.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                        Written By: Prof. Jeremy Thompson.