Reproduction Abstracts

The incidence of diabetes has increased in recent decades and by 2030, 366 million people worldwide will have the disease a significant proportion of these will be women of reproductive age. Diabetes is known to reduce fecundity and increase the likelihood of early pregnancy loss we propose that the high glucose levels seen in diabetes influence maternal fertility by impairing endometrial receptivity/function as a result of increased flux in the hexosamine biosynthetic pathway...

A significant proportion of IVF treatments are unsuccessful due to defects in implantation. The first stage of implantation is an attachment interaction between the trophectoderm (TE) of the blastocyst-stage embryo and the uterine luminal epithelium (LE). Endocrine signalling from the corpus luteum and paracrine signalling from uterine glands, uterine stroma and the embryo promotes LE receptivity. To investigate the LE–TE interaction we have developed an in vitro...

Implantation failure remains a bottleneck in assisted reproduction treatments (ARTs), as only ~25% of treatment cycles result in a live birth. During the early stages of implantation, endocrine and embryonic paracrine signals prime the receptivity of the uterine luminal epithelium (LE) before the trophectoderm (TE) of the blastocyst-stage embryo can mediate attachment and subsequently invade the uterine epithelium and stroma. We have developed an in vitro model using ...