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Evaluation of Embryonic Reproductive Competence
Richard T. Scott, MD, HCLD

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Hello, I’m Richard Scott and I’m at the American Society of Reproductive Medicine meeting and I’m going to be talking about the different factors involved in assessing the reproductive potential of embryos.

Over the last two decades of in vitro fertilization research, we’ve learned a lot about cleavage rates and cell division, and other things which are routinely assessed through light microscopy. Today we’ve realized that while those factors are important, they are really not sufficient to define those embryos that really do have the right reproductive potential to ultimately take home a normal baby. Because of that, investigators have started doing research in other areas, looking at the genetic competence, aneuploidy, and now potentially other technologies which may allow us to deal with areas of genomics and proteomics, which are just expanding exponentially in the basic science world.

My talk will be a discussion of some of those technologies that are now being applied to ask questions about reproductive competence, and different experimental designs of methodology, which will allow us to gain a better understanding of true reproductive potential in embryos.