Doctor Richard Oko, a Biomedical and Molecular Sciences researcher at Queen’s University, and his co-researchers, have produced an innovative approach to treating male infertility using a synthetic form of the sperm-originated protein called PAWP, determined to be a requirement in beginning the fertilization process.
Dr. Oko’s research is targetted towards diagnosing and treating cases of male factor infertility where a patient’s sperm is not able to begin or cause activation of the egg to form an early embryo.
“PAWP is able to induce embryo development in human eggs in a fashion similar to the natural triggering of embryo development by the sperm cell during fertilization,” said Dr. Oko, in a news release by the University. “Based on our findings, we envision that physicians will be able to improve their diagnosis and treatment of infertility, a problem that affects 10 to 15 per cent of couples worldwide.”
This study’s results emphasize the possible clinical uses of sperm PAWP as a predictor of infertility treatment. Supplementation of human sperm may be utilized to enhance the achievement rate of infertility treatments as time goes on, since human infertility treatments are currently performed by injecting an individual sperm into an egg.
As stated in the 2013 Annual Report on Assisted Reproductive Technologies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, merely 37 per cent of treatment cycles result in successful pregnancy.
This low success rate may be a result of a variety of factors in the male and female participants, including the inability of the sperm cell to initiate fertilization and trigger embryo development upon egg entry.
The results of this study, according to Dr. Oko, sets the groundwork for additional research of PAWP protein as a molecular marker for diagnosis and as a factor in improving infertility treatments.
Dr. Oko conducted this research – along with his former PhD student Mahmoud Aarabi, and Clifford Librach and Hanna Balakier – at the CReATe Fertility Centre in Toronto. The study has been published in the FASEB Journal, the world’s most cited biology journal.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
