9%, which was significantly lower than those of the pretreated embryos. The fetus development rate was 73.0% for the fresh embryos (control), and 57.7%, 65.2%, and 59.5% for those pretreated for 120, 300, and 600 s, respectively (Table 4). The implantation rate and fetus development rate were not significantly different between these groups. The implantation rate and fetus development rate in the group without pretreatment, however, were both 0%. The CPS used for vitrification must prevent damage due to ice crystal formation and growth, osmotic damage, and damage due to freeze fractures after the cytotoxicity of the cryoprotectant is suppressed [9]. P10 was expected to inhibit intracellular

ice crystal formation and growth. If the cryoprotectant permeates the embryo too slowly, however, the amount of cryoprotectant required selleck chemical to prevent ice crystal formation and growth may not enter the cells. It is also assumed find more that water rapidly penetrates from outside of the cells immediately after warming, before diffusion of intracellular cryoprotectant can occur, and the cells may be damaged due to osmotic expansion [15]. Moreover, if the time that the embryo is exposed to the pretreatment solution is too long, then cytotoxicity can occur [14]. In the experiments to develop the pretreatment solution for rat two-cell stage embryos, propylene glycol was selected because it had the fastest permeability (Fig. 1). Moreover, as the fetus development

rate in embryos exposed to P10 for 10 min was equivalent to that of controls (Table 2), it was considered that the amount of damage due to osmotic expansion and cytotoxicity was extremely low. PEPeS is a vitrification solution comprising a cell-permeable cryoprotectant and non-cell-permeable cryoprotectant (sugar and high molecular weight substance; Table 3). Because sucrose

is effective for preventing cell damage due to osmotic expansion immediately after warming [3] and [10], 0.3 mol of sucrose was added to make the PEPeS isotonic to the SPB1 that was used for warming. A cell-permeable cryoprotectant was effective for vitrification of CPS [9], therefore propylene glycol and ethylene glycol were also added. The concentration of propylene glycol was fixed as the same concentration as that of the pretreatment solution to avoid cytotoxicity [14] and because a lower concentration Nitroxoline of propylene glycol would diffuse from the pretreated embryos to the CPS, which may reduce freezing tolerance. Even at high concentrations, the cytotoxicity of ethylene glycol is low [14]. In addition, cell permeability is lower for ethylene glycol than propylene glycol, and the toxic effects of ethylene glycol inside the cell are low (Fig. 1). Ethylene glycol was added to promote vitrification due to its low cytotoxicity. Titterington et al. Titterington et al. [21] added 50% Percoll to vitrification solution (50% glycerol, 0.5 mol sucrose, 50% Percoll in Ham’s F-10 medium).