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Updated: Nov 25, 2025
Author Spotlight: Advancing Therapeutic Strategies for Improving Pregnancy Rates by Analyzing Embryo-Endometrium Interactions
Published on: June 21, 2024
Allogeneic Embryos Disregulate Leukemia Inhibitory Factor (LIF) and Its Receptor in the Porcine Endometrium During
Josep M Cambra1,2,3, Amaia Jauregi-Miguel3,4, Manuel Alvarez-Rodriguez3
1Department of Medicine and Animal Surgery, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, International Excellence Campus for Higher Education and Research "Campus Mare Nostrum", University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain.
Abstract:
Despite its advantages for pig breeding, embryo transfer (ET) has a major handicap: high embryo mortality during the pre- and implantation period, probably caused by divergent phenomena of tolerance between the immunologically unrelated (i.e., allogeneic) embryos and the recipient sow. Thus, to reach a similar maternal tolerance as in conventional breeding by artificial insemination (AI) would be the key to ET-success. For this reason, we studied the expression of the leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) cytokine and its receptor in the pig endometrium during the implantation period (days 18 and 24) in sows subjected to ET (AL group) vs. post-cervical-AI controls (Hemi-AL group). Quantification of expression was performed at both mRNA (rt-qPCR) and protein (WB) levels. The expression of endometrial LIF on day 24 was considerably lower in ET than in AI pregnancies. Correlations between endometrial mRNA levels of LIF and LIF-R showed that, contrary to early AI-pregnancies, ET-pregnancies lack an inverse relation between cytokine and receptor levels. In conclusion, ET-pregnancies lack sufficient endometrial levels of LIF to develop adequate immunotolerance mechanisms to prevent the rejection of allogeneic ET-embryos.
