Oocyte vitrification technology is widely used for assisted reproduction and fertility preservation, which requires precise washing sequences and timings of cryoprotectant agents (CPAs) treatment to relieve the osmotic shock to cells. The gold standard Cryotop method is extensively used in oocyte vitrification and is currently the most commonly used method in reproductive centers. However, the Cryotop method requires precise and complex manual manipulation by an embryologist, whose proficiency directly determines the effect of vitrification. Therefore, in this study, an automatic microfluidic system consisting of a novel open microfluidic chip and a set of automatic devices was established as a standardized operating protocol to facilitate the conventional manual Cryotop method and minimize the osmotic shock applied to the oocyte. The proposed open microfluidic system could smoothly change the CPA concentration around the oocyte during vitrification pretreatment, and transferred the treated oocyte to the Cryotop with a tiny droplet. The system better conformed to the operating habits of embryologists, whereas the integration of commercialized Cryotop facilitates the subsequent freezing and thawing processes. With standardized operating procedures, our system provides consistent treatment effects for each operation, leading to comparable survival rate, mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) and reactive oxygen species (ROS) level of oocytes to the manual Cryotop operations. The vitrification platform is the first reported microfluidic system integrating the function of cells transfer from the processing chip, which avoids the risk of cell loss or damage in a manual operation and ensures the sufficient cooling rate during liquid nitrogen (LN2) freezing. Our study demonstrates significant potential of the automatic microfluidic approach to serve as a facile and universal solution for the vitrification of various precious cells.
Keywords: cell manipulation; open microfluidic chip; vitrification.