What To-be-discard Biomaterials From ART Cycles Can Tell us About the Treatment Cycle Outcome?

Usually around 2/3 of IVF material will be discarded at the end of each treatment cycle, including immature oocytes, abnormal fertilized zygotes, poor grading embryos, spent culture medium, etc. Next generation sequencing will be performed for DNA / RNA analysis including the length and the quantity, RNA-seq will be applied for transcriptome profiling, and protein profile will be investigated in a pool sample. By applying various diagnostic tools against those to-be-discard biomaterials, we aim to identify potential underlying reasons of indicating either for an IVF failure or a successful cycle, and try to develop a non-invasive testing method for embryo quality check; better detection of the embryo implantation potential and eventually further increase the IVF clinical outcome.

Inclusion criteria

• Patients attending the Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Unit of the Chinese University of Hong Kong for ART treatment.
• Participant able to give voluntary, written, informed consent to participate in the study.

Exclusion criteria

• Patient using donor gamete in IVF treatment
• Patient refuses to join and failed to giving consent for any reasons