Co-culture: What to do after repeated IVF failures?

Copenhagen Fertility Center is now offering the combination of endometrial priming and co culture of endometrial epithelial cell and the woman’s embryo in one go.

In several years priming of the endometrial lining during an IVF cycle has been shown to improve the pregnancy rate among old women and women with repeated implantation failures. This priming has been done by taking a biopsy in the cycle prior to the IVF treatment cycle.

This priming was done in the cycle before, not to disturb the treatment cycle. However, other studies has reported a beneficial effect of priming done in the same cycle as the embryo transfer took place, not observing any disturbances of the later implantation, but also here an increase pregnancy rate is observed.

This priming procedure is thought to enhance growth factors in the endometrial tissue and hence promote and help the implantation.

Another way of helping the implantation process is to already mimic the endometrial embryonic interaction, which we know is vital in vivo situation for a perfect implantation to take place. This is done by culturing endometrial epithelial cell in co culture with the embryo form the IVF procedure. However, previously this has been difficult to handle in the clinical situation, due to either using foreign endometrial cells (which is not allowed due to the EU tissue directive), or freeze endometrial biopsies taken in previous cycles from the same women. These cell are not always in optimal condition after the frozen- thawn procedure.

Copenhagen Fertility Center has therefor devised a totally new concept of priming and co culture in the same treatment cycle, and now proved this to work in enhancing pregnancy rate in difficult IVF cases as repeated implantation failures.



A co-culture of a human blastocyst and endometrial cell in vitro. Please note the many vesicles communicating between the embryo and the endometrial monolayer.


Referencer

Lindenberg S, Hyttel P, Sjogren A. A comparative study of attachment of human, bovine, and mouse blastocysts to uterine epithelial monolayer. Hum Reprod 1989; 4:446-456.
Embryologic outcome and secretome profile of implanted blastocysts obtained after coculture in human endometrial epithelial cells versus the sequential system
Francisco Dominguez, Blanca Gadea, Amparo Mercader, Francisco J. Esteban, Antonio Pellicer, Carlos Simón

Fertility and sterility 1 February 2010 (volume 93 issue 3 Pages 774-782.e1 DOI: 10.1016/j.fertnstert.2008.10.019)

Beneficial effect of autologous endometrial cell coculture in patients with repeated implantation failure Victoria Eyheremendy, Fernanda G.E. Raffo, Mercedes Papayannis, Julia Barnes, Cintia Granados, Jorge Blaquier

Fertility and sterility 1 February 2010 (volume 93 issue 3 Pages 769-773 DOI: 10.1016/j.fertnstert.2008.10.060)

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