Last January, Emmanuel Macron announced the launch of a major plan to fight “the scourge of infertility”. Among the measures envisaged, a gynecological examination for women and a spermogram for men at 25 years old. Because the rate of male and female infertility has continued to increase in France. 3.3 million French people would be affected. If the causes are multiple (genetic, infectious, environmental, etc.), new technologies have a role to play.
Poor mobility of sperm (asthenospermia) is one of the causes of infertility. A team of German researchers has created Spermbots. These are propeller-shaped nanorobots that wrap around the tail of the sperm to help it reach the egg. This technology, developed as part of artificial insemination, is still being evaluated. Innovative sperm preparation techniques are arriving in labs such as Zymot. “We deposit the sperm in a device which allows better selection of the spermatozoa before insemination or in vitro fertilization by avoiding the use of centrifugal force,” explains Dr Steven Cens, head of the IVF center at the Polyclinique Pau Pyrénées. Another technique, PICSI or “Physiological Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection” which will use a petri dish for intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) with hyaluronan microdots, promoting the selection (…)
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