Sperm Selection

Selecting The Perfect Sperm = Higher Pregnancy Rates

While it is well understood it takes a “good” sperm and “good” egg to produce a healthy embryo, it’s not yet scientifically possible to easily evaluate egg quality. This makes it all the more important to focus on selecting the highest quality sperm.

Sperm quality has been proven to have a direct impact on early and late embryo development, and has been carefully studied. MCRM Fertility uses multiple innovative and unique techniques to select the “best” sperm for IVF procedures. This includes ICSI, PICSI and a unique process called sperm nanobead selection. 

Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI) Process

The ICSI process is standard with all in vitro fertilization procedures at MCRM Fertility. Our specialized laboratory experts individually select sperm and inject them into the cytoplasm of an individual oocyte (egg).

Sperm samples are prepared using multiple techniques to eliminate poor quality sperm. The remaining “healthy” sperm is then inspected by our embryologist under high-magnification.

The embryologist selects the “best looking” sperm using a fine glass needle. Next, an individual oocyte is selected and held gently in place with a specialized pipette. Then the embryologist uses the fine glass needle with the pre-selected sperm inside to puncture through the shell of the oocyte and into the cytoplasm. Then, slowly and gently, the sperm is injected, and the needle removed.

Magnetic Nanobead Selection Process

Since 2015, MCRM has been perfecting a technique that filters semen samples using magnetic-activated cell sorting (MACS). We add magnetic nanobeads to a semen sample, which attach to sperm cells whenever particular proteins are present. These proteins are early indicators of sperm decay, or lesser quality sperm.

When the sample of sperm and beads is filtered through a magnetic funnel, the sperm with attached beads are pulled away towards the magnetic surface. Only the “purest, higher-quality” sperm filter through, and are used for the ICSI process.

Preselective Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (PICSI)

Preselective Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (PICSI) is a technique that helps us to select the most mature sperm, post-Nanobead Sperm Selection, for use with ICSI.

In natural conception, sperm must bind to hyaluronan (a compound that helps grow cells) on the surface of the oocyte for fertilization. Only mature sperm can achieve this. With PICSI, small droplets of hyaluronan are added to a sample of sperm. Only the sperm that attaches to the hyaluronan is selected for use in ICSI.