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Updated: May 10, 2025
Evaluation of Intracellular Location of Reactive Oxygen Species in Solea Senegalensis Spermatozoa
Published on: March 11, 2018
Melatonin-loaded nanoparticles protecting human sperm from oxidative stress during cryopreservation
Haitao Xi1,2,3, Xue Gao1, Lin Qiu1,2
1Wenzhou Municipal Key Laboratory of Pediatric Pharmacy, Department of Pharmacy, The Second Affiliated Hospital and Yuying Children's Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China.
Background:
During the process of sperm cryopreservation, the overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS) triggers oxidative stress thereby leading to a reduction in sperm motility and quality. Therefore, it is a feasible strategy to mitigate oxidative damage during cryopreservation by adding antioxidants to freezing media.
Research Design And Methods:
In this study, we explored the potential of melatonin to protect sperm from oxidative stress-induced damage by evaluating sperm-related parameters after thawing through self-assembly with a hyaluronic acid-bilirubin conjugate into nanoparticles (M@HBn).
Results:
The optimized M@HBn exhibited uniform spherical morphology with average particle size of 112.57 ± 9.8 nm, PDI of 0.22 ± 0.02, a surface potential of - 0.43 ± 1.02 mV and entrapment efficiency of 85.1 ± 4.6%. The addition of 5 μM M@HBn demonstrated a notable enhancement in frozen-thawed human spermatozoa viability, motility, and DNA integrity by scavenging ROS. Additionally, the use of M@HBn supplementation in freezing medium resulted in the most mitochondrial stability and total viability as compared to the other groups.
Conclusions:
These findings suggest that M@HBn have the potential to serve as a novel drug delivery platform for protecting spermatozoa against from cryodamage while enhancing the quality of cryopreserved sperm and the bioavailability of melatonin.
