Abstract
Infertility is a worldwide important issue. Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) becomes one of the most important studies in the 21st Century. The reasons of infertility are most from the modern plague, such as poor nutrition, obesity, alcohol, cigarette, stress and drugs. Recently, in vitro fertilization (IVF), which holds the highest success rate, is a major treatment for infertility. In this research, the microfluidic devices made by a simple fabrication were developed. We provided the method and operation by integrating both microfluidic techniques and coculture of stromal cells with embryos to mimic the uterus in vitro. The culturing by the dynamic system with the fresh medium also enhances the embryo development. Furthermore, the embryos were automatically and individually trapped via the flow resistance design. The design was simulated and analyzed via the commercial software, CFD and ANSYS CFX, to optimize the flow channel design as well as reduce the manual operation, which resulted in the possibility of embryos damaged. And the most important thing is that the chip is easy to track and manage individual embryos. The integrated Labchip functions include automatic trapping, dynamic perfusion and coculture to mimic the uterus in vitro. The experimental results show that this Labchip could provide better environment compared with some different conditions such as monoculture and static culture. The embryos could be cultured in comparable blastocyst rate versus the traditional method (60% vs. 57.8%). Besides, the embryos cultured on the chip have the faster growth rate than the traditional method. All of these mean that our Labchip provides a bionic environment for embryo developing. Finally, we transfer the embryos cultured from our Labchip into the maternal uterus and born the mice. It verifies the feasibility and prospective of this Labchip.