The discipline of the bioengineering has been breaking the mold in recent times and is increasingly established as an important and almost fundamental option to offer through the regenerative medicine a cure for patients with problems in one or more of their organs. More specifically, and as far as reproductive medicine is concerned, this discipline is emerging as a very promising avenue.
It is in this line that the study led by colleagues from the IVI Foundation and entitled “Tissue-specific decellularized endometrial substratum mimicking different physiological conditions influences in vitro embryo development in a rabbit model ”.
It is a work published in the prestigious magazine Acta Biomaterialia, a Bioengineering publication with a high impact index –more than a 6-, and that could lay the foundations for the improvement in the success rates of reproductive treatments.
And how would this be possible? The Dr. Irene Cervelló, expert in the area of Stem Cells and Bioengineering of the IVI Foundation, and director of the doctoral thesis that integrates this work explains that “the research is based on a very novel technique, consisting of creating a hydrogel from an endometrium from which we have removed all the cells, that is, its genetic material. Subsequently, once the gel was made, we have studied the applications that it may have both in vitro – a study already published – and in vivo – a study in progress- “.
The hydrogel obtained has been used to cover the culture plates on which the development of the embryos takes place up to the blastocyst stage inside the incubators. Thus, it is possible to create a more comfortable environment for the embryos, placed on the proteins of the extracellular matrix of the endometrium, something that is much more comfortable for them than resting directly on the plastic of the culture plates that we use today in the laboratories.
“Indeed, after 3 years of research and as we could suppose, the embryos that grow with the support that we have created evolve and develop favorably, exactly the same as in vitro embryos in their most suitable standard conditions. In the future, we hope to be able to optimize this technique by adding vitamins or hormones to the hydrogel that allow us to improve embryonic evolution, that is, the quality to which the embryos reach, as well as the development capacity of these embryos ”, adds Dr. Cervelló.
The work, which has had the collaboration of the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), still in an initial phase, so it has been carried out in rabbits so far. However, and ultimately, although there is still a long way to go, this hydrogel that simulates the endometrium could improve the development of the embryo with new in vitro culture techniques on natural supports, ultimately resulting in a improvement in the success rates of assisted reproduction treatments.
A halo of hope for women with endometrial damage
If to date the in vitro applications of bioengineering have been analyzed, this is defined by the study of this hydrogel in vivo.
The team led by Dra. Cervelló will soon focus on analyze the applications of this hydrogel within the uterus to regenerate the endometrium in patients with problems in this organ. This would make possible something that current reproductive treatments cannot.
About the impact index
“What does the impact index refer to?” Well, the impact index helps to know the impact of a scientific journal within the scientific community. It is a tool used to measure, compare and evaluate the relevance of publications in the same scientific field.
How is it calculated? Its measurement is given by the number of times that articles published in a journal are cited on average. For example, the impact index of a journal in 2018 would be defined by the number of times that the articles that were published in it in 2016 and 2017 were cited during 2018.
“To get an idea, two prestigious magazines in the field of assisted reproduction such as Fertility & Sterility or Human Reproduction They have an impact index of 4.8 and 5, respectively (subject to fluctuations between years). And, in this case, the magazine Acta Biomaterialia has an impact index greater than 6; hence the importance of having achieved the publication of our work in a medium with great scientific weight like this one, even greater than that achieved by the most important assisted reproduction journals ”, concludes Dr. Cervelló.
