Realization of commercial applicability of a micro fluidic chip in artificial reproduction

Fertility decline in Taiwan is one of the major issues in reproductive medicine. Most research in infertility treatment is focused on the improvement of female reproductive technology; however, the sorting technique for high quality sperm is also a limitation for the subsequent success rate of pregnancy. Current sperm screening methods before in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures are based on sperm motility (swim-up) or sperm density (centrifugation by Percoll); however, the long handling processes expose spermatozoa to varying buffers and consequential fluctuations in osmolality and pH, leading to stress sperm membrane, generate ROS, and DNA damage. Besides, there is no screening platform available to indicate sperm health with functional parameters, including chemotaxis, acrosome reaction, and fertility at the same time. In summary, the purpose of out project will address the problems mentioned above, through the incorporation of microfluidic biochip system, and develop module-oriented analyzer kits for instant, rapid and accurate separation, counting and display. The provided sperm quality information is divided into sperm-sorting and sperm-analyzing chips. In sperm sorting chip, we utilize adverse swimming character of sperm to isolate spermatozoa with highest motility within 30 min, expecting to select low damage and high fertility sperms compared to conventional sorting technologies. Hence, we tried to conduct a pioneer trial to evaluate certain equal clinical efficacy of lifesorter chip with current products. Therefore, the completion of this project can provide a fast and convenient clinical detection tools for application in reproductive medicine, and can also sever as the cornerstone for future development of self-design medical equipment.