Tissue Culture Techniques

1. Low Oxygen Tension – We use low oxygen tension (5% to 6%) in our incubators for tissue culture in order to provide an optimal environment for the embryos to develop.
2. Fresh Media Daily – We do not pre-incubate our culture media that we use for the embryos. We prepare fresh culture media daily for the embryos in order to avoid any degradation of nutrients for the embryos.
3. Special Culture Vessel – We developed a proprietary container for culturing embryos in order to maximize their developmental potential.
4. Group Co-Culture by Embryo Quality – We culture our embryos in groups in order to take advantage of any growth factors secreted by the embryos that could influence better development of others. Additionally, we group embryos by quality in case poor quality embryos secrete factors that could delay the growth of others.
5. Glutamine-Free Medium – This is used to prevent ammonia build-up in culture media, which could delay embryo development.
6. Microdroplet Culture – We culture our embryos in micro-droplets in order to take advantage of embryo growth factors.
7. Bench-top Incubator – We use bench-top incubators for the culture of embryos because the equilibration to incubation environment is faster. It allows us to use low oxygen incubation for better development, and it allows us to place the incubator inside a laminar flow hood which gives a better protection from microbial contamination from the air.
8. Off-Gas Tubes and Dishes – Test tubes and petri dishes are off-gassed prior to use in order to avoid VOC's.
9. Washed Oil – Oil we use for tissue culture is washed in order to remove any contaminants that may be present in the oil.
10. SSS (Synthetic Serum Substitute) – We use SSS as our source for protein supplementation, rather than the patient's own serum, in order to avoid variability and to maintain a reliable and consistent source of protein for the culture media.