Introduction: A patient may seek the use of IVF technology when they are struggling to become pregnant. To improve IVF outcomes, much research is focused on identifying markers to allow embryologists to transfer embryos with the greatest chance of a successful pregnancy. Women of advanced maternal age, which is thirty-five years and older have a lower chance of success on a first attempt with IVF, women at the age of 40 have a 9% chance of a live birth with IVF. Therefore, identification of an additional biomarker during preimplantation embryo development that is associated with successful implantation in AMA patients, may provide another metric to use when selecting the most viable embryo for transfer.
Methods: Blastocoel fluid-conditioned media was collected from day-5 IVF-embryos that underwent PGT-A. RNA was purified from individual blastocoel fluid samples and then cDNA was synthesized. RT-qPCR was then performed to assess levels of SHARPIN in 64 IVF-embryos with known implantation outcomes and age of mother. Genes selected for analysis in this study were identified in a previous RNASeq analysis from another set of blastocoel fluid samples.
Results: Initial results suggest that the SHARPIN gene shows increased expression on 128 samples.
Conclusions: Analysis of expression of SHARPIN was associated with successful implantation outcomes in AMA patients in this preliminary analysis. SHARPIN functions as a ubiquitin ligase. Determining which genes are expressed in the blastocoel fluid from AMA patients with successful outcomes may lead to an additional embryo selection tool for other AMA patients utilizing IVF.