Grants and Contributions:

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Title:

Sperm Olympics: Selecting 1 in 100,000 for Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection

Agreement Number:

CHRPJ

Agreement Value:

$272,390.00

Agreement Date:

Apr 25, 2017 -

Organization:

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada

Location:

Ontario, CA

Reference Number:

GC-2017-Q1-00246

Agreement Type:

Grant

Report Type:

Grants and Contributions

Additional Information:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2020-2021)

Recipient's Legal Name:

Sinton, David (University of Toronto)

Program:

Collaborative Health Research Projects

Program Purpose:

In North America, one in six couples experiences infertility - a 2-fold increase since 1992.x000D
Assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) andx000D
intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), require human intervention to manually select spermx000D
in the case of ICSI a single sperm. This manual process is expensive, inefficient, prone tox000D
operator-error and largely random, resulting in sub-optimal pregnancy outcomes andx000D
ultimately the health of offspring. No sperm selection method addresses this growing marketx000D
and medical need. In 2015 we discovered a distinct swimming mode that human sperm use tox000D
navigate confined viscous regions of the female reproductive tract. We have formed a team ofx000D
male fertility, microfluidic engineering, and clinical experts to develop and clinically test ax000D
microfluidic platform that leverages this natural swimming ability to select the highest qualityx000D
sperm cells for direct injection - the Sperm Olympics.