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Recombinant human leukemia inhibitory factor does not enhance in vitro human blastocyst formation
A Jurisicova1, A Ben-Chetrit, S L Varmuza
1Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Toronto Hospital Research Institute, Ontario, Canada.
Objective:
To assess the effect of human recombinant leukemia inhibitory factor in different doses on human blastocyst formation.
Setting:
A university-based tertiary referral center (The Toronto Hospital).
Interventions:
Nontransferable human embryos (n = 473) at the two- to six-cell stage were obtained from patients undergoing IVF and were split randomly into five groups. Embryos in group A (n = 164) were cultured as the control group in Ham's F-10 (GIBCO-BRL, Grand Island, NY) + 10% human sera. Embryos in groups B, C, D, and E (n = 54, 78, 87, and 80, respectively) were cultured in the same medium supplemented with human recombinant leukemia inhibitory factor in four different concentrations (5, 7.5, 10, and 20 ng/mL, respectively). Morphological assessment of embryo development was recorded daily.
Main Outcome Measure:
Human blastocyst formation.
Results:
No significant difference was detected in the rate of blastocyst formation of embryos in the study groups when compared with embryos in group A.
Conclusions:
This study shows that 5 to 20 ng/mL of recombinant leukemia inhibitory factor in standard medium does not enhance in vitro human blastocyst formation. It is possible that recombinant leukemia inhibitory factor may play a role at later stages of human embryogenesis and during implantation.