Amargant i Riera, Farners, 1990-García, DésiréeBarragan, MontserratVassena, RitaVernos, Isabelle, 1959-2019-12-052019-12-052018Amargant F, García D, Barragán M, Vassena R, Vernos I. Functional analysis of human pathological semen samples in an oocyte cytoplasmic ex vivo system. Sci Rep. 2018;8(1):15348. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-33468-x2045-2322http://hdl.handle.net/10230/43105Human fertilization and embryo development involve a wide range of critical processes that determine the successful development of a new organism. Although Assisted Reproduction Technologies (ART) may help solve infertility problems associated to severe male factor, the live birth rate is still low. A high proportion of ART failures occurs before implantation. Understanding the causes for these failures has been difficult due to technical and ethical limitations. Diagnostic procedures on human spermatozoa in particular have been limited to morphology and swimming behaviours while other functional requirements during early development have not been addressed due to the lack of suitable assays. Here, we have established a quantitative system based on the use of Xenopus egg extracts and human spermatozoa. This system provides novel possibilities for the functional characterization of human spermatozoa. Using clinical data we show that indeed this approach offers a set of complementary data for the functional evaluation of spermatozoa from patients.application/pdfeng© The Author(s) 2018. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-33468-xEmbryologyInfertilityMitotic spindleinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess