Syringe to improve sperm selection for infertile couples

Bioengineering researchers from Monash University have developed a syringe that uses a 3D filter to detect and isolate viable sperm in less than 15 minutes. The breakthrough harnesses simple plastic syringe technology that can be readily mass produced, bringing hope and cheaper treatment solutions to 180 million people affected by infertility worldwide.

As described in the journal Advanced Materials Technologies, the syringe works by drawing 1.5 mL of semen into a chamber that then passes through a network of 560 parallel microchannels (tiny cylinders). The quality sperm swim through the microchannels into the selection chamber, where they can be extracted, leaving the poor-quality sperm behind. This process takes less than 15 minutes and is able to retrieve more than 41% of healthy sperm from the sample.

Using this technique, researchers can improve the quality of sperm selection by more than 65% compared to conventional methods. This reduces the need for complex and invasive intracytoplasmic sperm injection procedures (injecting a single sperm into an egg), in favour of artificial insemination directly into the uterus. Supervising researcher Dr Resa Nosrati said the innovation would ultimately result in higher success rates for couples seeking fertility treatment, at lower cost.

“Sperm selection is a crucial part of infertility treatment, but the conventional clinical methods for sperm selection haven’t changed over the past 30 years,” Nosrati said. Due to this lack of technological developments, the success rate of treatment methods has stagnated at 35% per cycle.

“Using the sperm syringe we can select sperm with over 65% improvement in DNA integrity and morphology (make-up), and since DNA quality is directly linked with fertilisation success, we expect to improve assisted reproductive technology (ART) outcomes. This technology can help to standardise and streamline the sperm selection process in fertility clinics.”

The research was led by PhD candidate Farin Yazdan Parast, who explained, “The sperm syringe provides a high-throughput device for one-step semen purification and sperm selection. The 3D sorting platform provides the maximum contact area between the semen sample and selection events by arranging microchannels in a 3D structure to enable highly parallelised and rapid sorting.

“Due to this considerably high surface-to-volume ratio, active sperm can easily find and enter the microchannels, leaving the raw sample behind. This provides an effective selection mechanism that outperforms both conventional clinical methods and other more recent sperm selection technologies.”

The sperm syringe has been patented and the researchers are examining how to commercialise the device for use in fertility clinics. Further clinical testing is also planned.

Image credit: iStock.com/Alexandr Mitiuc

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