Adaptation of the technology for culturing bovine embryos on commercial media for human embryos

Abstract

We have studied the efficiency of using commercial media developed for human-assisted reproductive technologies (ART) for bovine embryos. The dynamics of bovine cells and embryos at the stages of maturation, fertilization, and preimplantation development were analyzed on three different media types, including ones particularly designed for bovine ART. Cumulus-oocyte complexes were divided into three groups: group 1 – maturation, fertilization, and culture were performed on media IVF-Bioscience (BO-IVM, BO-IVF, BO-IVC) developed for bovine animals; group 2 – maturation, fertilization, and culture were done on Vitrolife human ART media (G-IVF, G-TL); group 3 – maturation, fertilization, and culture were done on Irvine Scientific (Continuous Single Culture Complete) ART media. Significant distinctions in maturation, cleavage and blastulation indicators were found between embryos cultured on Vitrolife G-series human ART media and embryos processed on IVF-Bioscience bovine cattle media and Irvine Scientific Continuous Single Culture Complete human ART media. The difference in performance between the last two media was less pronounced. The obtained results make it possible to simplify the maturation of oocytes and the cultivation of bovine embryos to achieve reproducible outcomes without variability from batch to batch.