Scientists Develop Device To Speed Up IVF Process

In-vitro fertilization(IVF) has been made a sure medical process for couples hoping for babies, as scientists have discovered a microfluidic device that will select the strongest sperm to be used.

The development was created by Alireza Abbaspourrad and his team from the University of Cornell as they stated that the device would go a long way to ease the jobs of doctors as the normal separation method for the most active sperm is usually stressful and time consuming.

“The older method is tedious, time-consuming and not efficient. It’s the time that laboratory technicians and physicians expend that makes the process expensive.

“With this method, it’s five minutes instead of several hours,” he said.

Explaining the operation of the device, Soon Hon Cheong, Ph.D., assistant professor in the university said, “Here, we took advantage of sperm’s natural tendency to redirect against fluid flow, once the sperm reaches a certain velocity.”

“Once the sperm detect interference, they can use it to swim upstream. That’s when we can trap them. We could separate the good sperm from the not-so-strong in a reasonably elegant way. We are able to fine-tune our selection process,” he added.