Cryopreservation of oocytes and embryos plays an important role in the clinical practice of mammal in vitro fertilization (IVF). Currently, manual oocyte/embryo vitrification was adopted in IVF clinics worldwide. Because the inherent drawback of manual operation, practical vitrification suffers by fluctuated success rate, tedious, time-consuming, and prone to human error. Microfluidic technology has shown significant breakthroughs in biological applications such as point-of-care diagnostics, bioterrorism detection, and drug discovery. In this thesis, we present a microfluidic approach allows the fluid delivery system to deliver the solution in a programmed and highly control manner. It successfully resolved the drawbacks of manual vitrification. The performance of the technolo...[ Read more ]

Cryopreservation of oocytes and embryos plays an important role in the clinical practice of mammal in vitro fertilization (IVF). Currently, manual oocyte/embryo vitrification was adopted in IVF clinics worldwide. Because the inherent drawback of manual operation, practical vitrification suffers by fluctuated success rate, tedious, time-consuming, and prone to human error. Microfluidic technology has shown significant breakthroughs in biological applications such as point-of-care diagnostics, bioterrorism detection, and drug discovery. In this thesis, we present a microfluidic approach allows the fluid delivery system to deliver the solution in a programmed and highly control manner. It successfully resolved the drawbacks of manual vitrification. The performance of the technology was verified with mouse embryos. The vitrification result shows that the success rate of this microfluidic vitrification chip is 99% compared with 80-90% with traditional manual operation.

Furthermore, this thesis describes a business plan of this microfluidic chip as an automated human eggs and embryos cryopreservation platform for In- Vitro fertilization. It also analyses industry, market, the environment of the assisted reproductive technology industry, discusses business model, development plan, operation plan, and financial projection. We think this microfluidic technology has great potential to be used as a practical device for human oocytes and embryos cryopreservation in IVF.