Purpose To assess the efficacy of fertility preservation (FP) and the impact of chemotherapy on the reproductive potential of Japanese patients with breast cancer. Methods Sixty-two patients with breast cancer visited the authors' centers from October, 2003 to June, 2015. They were divided into two groups according to the treatment: oocyte or embryo vitrification for FP before cancer treatmen...

In a total of 1048 intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) cycles, motile spermatozoa from four out of 424 patients (0.9%) failed to fertilize oocytes, despite an apparently successful ICSI procedure. No activation was observed in these injected oocytes. The spermatozoa from three of the four patients were injected into unfertilized mouse oocytes by ICSI (mouse test) to evaluate their oocyte ac...

Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is the method of choice for fertilizing horse oocytes in vitro. Nevertheless, for reasons that are not yet clear, embryo development rates are low. The aims of this study were to examine cytoskeletal and chromatin reorganization in horse oocytes fertilized by ICSI or activated parthenogenetically. Additional oocytes were injected with a sperm labeled with...

The utility of cryopreserved mouse gametes for reproduction of transgenic mice depends on development of assisted reproductive technologies, including vitrification of unfertilized mouse oocytes. Due to hardening of the zona pellucida, spermatozoa are often unable to penetrate vitrified-warmed (V-W) oocytes. Laser-assisted in vitro fertilization (LAIVF) facilitates fertilization by allowing eas...

In cryopreservation of mammalian germ cells, unfertilized oocytes are one of the most available stages because these cryopreserved oocytes can be used for assisted reproductive technologies, including in vitro fertilization (IVF) and intracytoplasmic sperm injection. However, it has been generally reported that the fertility and developmental ability of the oocytes are reduced by cryopreservati...