Coculture with ovarian cancer cell enhances human blastocyst formation in vitro.

OBJECTIVE

To examine the effect of human embryo coculture with an ovarian cancer cell line.

DESIGN

Prospective, randomized in vitro study.

SETTING

University of Toronto IVF clinic at The Toronto Hospital.

PATIENTS

Couples undergoing IVF who chose not to cryopreserve their spare embryos and were willing to donate spare embryos for research.

INTERVENTION

Spare embryos were cultured randomly either under regular conditions with Ham's F-10 medium supplemented with 10% heat inactivated human serum (n = 189) or were cocultured in the same medium, with human ovarian epithelial cancer cells (n = 173).

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE

Blastocyst formation.

RESULTS

Coculture with the cancer cell line improved the preimplantation embryo development to the blastocyst stage. There was a significant increase in the number of cavitating morulae (68%) and the proportion of embryos reaching the fully expanded blastocyst stage (39%) compared with those in standard culture medium (34% and 23%, respectively).

CONCLUSION

Coculture of early cleavage stage human embryos with epithelial cancer cells markedly improves in vitro human blastocyst formation compared with standard culture conditions.