SBIR-STTR Award

Embryo transfer is one of the tools a livestock producer can utilize to rapidly increase the genetic gain within the herd overcome low pregnancy rates during physiological stress or leverage high quality females by producing multiple offspring per female (rather than 1/year).The ability to transfer fresh or frozen embryos is important in dairy and beef cattle reproduction as well as in sheep goats deer and humans. Embryos can be produced in a petri dish in a process called in vitro production. Unfortunately this is a very expensive tool in part because of the low production (~9% of eggs result in a live calf) in this fixed cost production system. That means that it costs approximately the same to produce 9 embryos as50 embryos. Membrane Protective Technologies' (MPTI) technology GameteGuard® is poised to improve these economics to the benefit of dairy farmer and beef producers. In this Phase I research proposal MPTI will use its proprietary technology comprised of organic plant-derived antioxidants called GameteGuard® to improve the yield of high quality blastocysts (embryos) in an in vitro production system. Collaboration with Colorado State University allows MPTI to assess the benefits of our technology in a well-defined embryo production system. The production of embryos requires multiple steps transferring the developing embryo into different media. The various media simulate the transition from the site of fertilization in the female (ovary and fallopian tube) to the site of maturation (uterus).MPTI will examine the benefit of various GameteGuard® formulations in each of the four steps of invitro embryo production. Preliminary research wherein GameteGuard® was added ONLY to the first or first and second medium (<16% of the total process) resulted 30 to 150% improvement in blastocyst yield as compared to the control(depending on treatment).Perhaps more importantly the quality of blastocysts improved. One treatment resulted in 25% more grade 1 blastocysts (the best quality).This is economically important because only high quality blastocysts can be successfully frozen. These data indicate that GameteGuard® addition will substantially improve the rate of oocyte transition to high quality freezable embryos. This phase I project will measure the impact of adding GameteGuard® to each of the incubation media in a step followed by quantifying the combined effects in Phase II. The ultimate goal of these research is optimization of a system to produce high quality frozen embryos (the most economically important product) via supplementation with GameteGuard®. The potential economic impact of this low cost technology is eclipsed by the potential gain by improving the embryo yield from 8% to 12%a potential $14000 benefit per 100 oocytes in high quality beef cattle. Furthermore the economic upside of developing a technology that serves as a platform for other species is immense. This project is responsive to USDA strategic goal 2 objective 2.2 by improving the competitive nature of USDA agriculture and FY research priority 1 by improving production efficiency of agriculturally important animals.