Human infertility affects an estimated 15% of couples globally, and about one-third of these infertility cases are of male origin. Yes, we do have Male infertility!
Male infertility is a reproductive disease that has long been overlooked (especially in this part of the world where I come from- Africa), and it is a real issue that often brings marital issues and depression for some people. The truth is there is no need for men to hide or pretend to be healthy, once a man notices a reproductive or sexual ill health it is best to seek Medical assistance from a Urologist or Fertility Health Expert/Physician. There are lots of good technological approach to solve most reproductive diseases, thanks to technological advancement.
Reproduction and fertilization are important for survival and propagation of any species. Couples who cannot reproduce naturally have to use assisted/artificial reproductive technologies and clinical procedures. Isolation of healthy sperm from raw semen is an integral part of these clinical procedures and technologies.
Today one of such technologies is showing hope for selecting the healthiest sperm for In-vitro fertilization for couples whose sperm motility or health is compromised. Before now, existing clinical solutions for sperm sorting during In-vitro fertilization are common methods (which are usually long and cumbersome) called washing swim-up (WSU) –(as the name indicates Sperm cells collected are washed up in the laboratory with antibiotics and protein supplements ref and differential density gradient centrifugation (DDGC) procedures are normally used for a lot of different types of assisted reproductive procedures, although it’s been claimed that not all of them will have great efficiency in selecting high quality spermref. Some techniques are better indicated for certain conditions. For example, high concentrations of highly motile sperm from men with healthy spermatozoa will show good performance after swim-up, and this would normally be ok for a regular IVF, including pre-processing and centrifugation-based steps. These methods do however fall short when sorting for sperm free of DNA damage, reactive oxygen species and epigenetic abnormalities. Although several microfluidic platforms exist, they suffer from structural complexities like pumps or chemo-attractants, setting insurmountable barriers for clinical adoption. Then comes SPARTAN to the rescue! SPARTAN is acronym for Simple Periodic Array for Trapping And Isolation a technology inspired by the natural capabilities of the female reproductive tract to filter/select for a healthy sperm, the female reproductive tract has an in vivo natural sperm sorting mechanism where vaginal mucus becomes less viscous and form microchannels to guide sperm towards egg. SPARTAN also has features of pillar arrays that efficiently isolates sperms of high motility and normal morphology with better epigenetic global demethylation, from raw semen. The Simple Periodic Array for Trapping And Isolation (SPARTAN) was designed by collaborative team work between Prof. Erkan Tüzel an associate professor of physics, biomedical engineering, and computer science and Utkan Demirci a professor of radiology and electrical engineering giving us a chip that efficiently sorts motile, healthy and morphologically normal sperm without centrifugation. ref Awesome!
SPARTAN controls the direction of sperm movements, increasing the spatial separation between progressive and non-progressive motile sperm populations within a remarkable short assay time of 10 minutes. With over 99% motile sperm sorted, a 5 times improved morphology, 3 times increase in nuclear maturity, and 2–4-times in DNA integrity enhancement. SPARTAN gives a standard method with little or no variations from human errors for sperm selection. SPARTAN can also be applied in other areas like breeding of farm animals, conservation ecology, and design of flagellar microrobots for diagnostics.
Before SPARTAN there has been other methods for sperm selection used in Artificial Reproductive Technologies like Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) where a single sperm cell is injected directly into the cytoplasm of an egg ref this method though gave an increased fertilization rate, but it has no increased live birth rates due to early developmental issues resulting from chromosomal abnormalities thus a disadvantage of ICSI is its inability to detect/select a healthy spermatozoa. This makes evaluation of functional, physiological and molecular traits of spermatozoa by ICSI difficult and not ideal as DNA abnormalities might be passed on to offspring by selected spermatozoon. Thus increased scientific work in this area to develop new strategies for successful selection of the best spermatozoa with regards to phenotype, functional characteristics and genetic and molecular integrity led to this new technology – SPARTAN.
The SPARTAN device is about 12 to 16 millimeters long and 4 millimeters wide. Sperm cells are injected into one end and the fastest and healthiest sperm cells are collected on the opposite end for immediate use in in-vitro fertilization. The device also prevents cell damages that can occur with traditional sorting methods, such as those using high-force centrifuges. Because SPARTAN can be used immediately in the fertility clinic, sperm cells do not need to be frozen and shipped to a laboratory for processing; the in-clinic sorting procedure takes an average of 10-30 minutes.
A major advatange of this new technology besides having healthy sperm cells, is the fact that patients will spend less money generally on IVF treatments as this the new sperm sorting technology could be able to get them pregnant without going through several treatment cycles.
According to DxNow, Inc., a Gaithersburg company that develops advanced microfluidic and imaging technologies, (who licensed the patent for SPARTAN) plans to apply for FDA approval are ongoing and expectations for release to use this device commercially might be in July 2018. ref
In Conclusion, SPARTAN provides a cost-effective and reliable way to accurately select for sperm attributes relevant to a successful Artificial Reproductive Technology outcome.
By the way, Prof. Erkan Tüzel and Prof. Utkan Demirci SPARTAN research work for over years was sponsored by grants from the National Science Foundation of the USA government. Please when will we have such interest in Science and technology from our Government in this part of the world?!