A Media Formulation To Improve Implantation Rates And Pregnancy Outcome Following ART
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$304,380.00
Summary
Since women are delaying childbearing, ART is increasingly required. 2-3% of births in Australia follow ART. Only 15-40% of embryo transfers in assisted reproduction (ART) result in ongoing pregnancies. The poor success rate is due to the fact that the embryo culture media bear no resemblance to the maternal environment in which they grow normally. The new culture media to be validated in this proposal includes factors that are critical for embryo implantation and will improve ART success.
Embryo implantation is a critical step in establishing pregnancy, requiring stable attachment of an embryo to the uterus. For this to occur, the embryo must be implantation competent and the uterus must be receptive. However, to date, little is known about the interactions between the two that determine a successful implantation in the human. This project will investigate a novel embryo-derived enzyme that drives human implantation. These studies are important to improve infertility treatment.
The Legacy Of The Egg: How Maternal Factors Set Offspring Health And Lifecourse Potential
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$697,605.00
Summary
Before an oocyte is fertilised, it contains all the material needed to form an embryo, and a legacy of information about its environment. My research aims to discover how oocyte signals, accumulated before conception, determine the health of the future individual; and then harness this knowledge to improve female reproductive health and generate new approaches to treat infertility and to optimise healthy embryo development in all pregnancies.
The aim of this project is to determine whether melatonin supplementation has an effect on cumulative pregnancy and delivery rates, allowing for the use of frozen embryos obtained during a melatonin treatment cycle. This will be achieved by a series of experiments designed to investigate the effect of melatonin on follicular fluid and culture media as well as assessing clinical pregnancy rates and delivery rates.