<p>Crypreservation of oocytes is recently being considered to be a valid choice in infertility treatments.Low survival and fertilization rates due to inefficient slow freeze protocols have been the outcome ofmany previous studies done in the field. However, introduction of the vitrification technique and itsapplication in reproductive medicine and to some extent new improved slow freeze protocols haveshown that oocytes can be cryopreserved with successful outcome.</p><p>In this project the survival rate of oocytes after vitrification with MediCult Vitrification andWarming Media has been studied. Also, a comparison of the carriers Cryoloop (an open system) andCryopette (a closed system) has been performed.</p><p>A total of 43 oocytes were vitrified and warmed according to MediCult's protocol, of which 21oocytes with Cryoloop and 22 with Cryopette. The cells were post-thaw incubated in a physiologicalenvironment for 24h. During that time the morphology and viability were observed and noted after 2h,over night and after 24h. No significant difference in survival rates of the oocytes' was observed usingthe two carriers, and the total survival rate of the oocytes was 83.7%. This indicates thatcryopreservation of oocytes is a valid choice in fertility treatments and that the new product Cryopettecan be used clinically with just as good results as the well established Cryoloop technique. This merits further studies on the applicability of vitrification on oocytes and the Cryopette technique.</p>

Crypreservation of oocytes is recently being considered to be a valid choice in infertility treatments.Low survival and fertilization rates due to inefficient slow freeze protocols have been the outcome ofmany previous studies done in the field. However, introduction of the vitrification technique and itsapplication in reproductive medicine and to some extent new improved slow freeze protocols haveshown that oocytes can be cryopreserved with successful outcome. In this project the survival rate of oocytes after vitrification with MediCult Vitrification andWarming Media has been studied. Also, a comparison of the carriers Cryoloop (an open system) andCryopette (a closed system) has been performed. A total of 43 oocytes were vitrified and warmed according to MediCult's protocol, of which 21oocytes with Cryoloop and 22 with Cryopette. The cells were post-thaw incubated in a physiologicalenvironment for 24h. During that time the morphology and viability were observed and noted after 2h,over night and after 24h. No significant difference in survival rates of the oocytes' was observed usingthe two carriers, and the total survival rate of the oocytes was 83.7%. This indicates thatcryopreservation of oocytes is a valid choice in fertility treatments and that the new product Cryopettecan be used clinically with just as good results as the well established Cryoloop technique. This merits further studies on the applicability of vitrification on oocytes and the Cryopette technique.

Cryopreservation of gametes and embryos is crucial in fertility treatment and fertility preservation. Preservation of oocytes is a more complicated process than preservation of sperm and embryos. According to recent studies, a new preservation technique called vitrification is found to have higher rates of oocytes-survival after warming    The aim of this study was to evaluate VitriBlast™ Kit, for vitrification of oocytes. Vitrification is an ultra-rapid freezing method in the presence with of high concentrations of cryoprotectants which avoids intracellular ice-crystal formation during the freezing and warming process.     In this study, a total number of 117 immature oocytes were used and 62 of these oocytes were vitrified with VitroBlast™ Kit. During this process two different vitrification devices were used, VitroLoop™ and Cryopette®. After warming, the average survival rate for vitrified oocytes was found to be 61% for VitroLoop™ and 15% for Cryopette® (p&lt;0.001). The remaining 55 oocytes were used as a non-frozen control group and the same incubation method as for vitrified oocytes was used. The survival rate for the control groups was higher than for the vitrified groups (93% versus 35%, p&lt;0.001). The results of this study indicate that VitriBlast™ Kit is not suitable for vitrification of oocytes.