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Assisted Oocyte Activation (AOA) overcomes ICSI fertilization failure
AOA artificially activates oocytes by ‘mimicking’ the calcium oscillations induced during ‘natural’ fertilization
AOA was developed originally to obtain:
• parthenogenetic embryos to study embryogenesis • cloned embryos (somatic cell nuclear transfer)
Human AOA has shown to be most efficient in case of sperm‐related activation deficiencies
Heindryckx et al., 2005 and 2008
Learning objectives
• Prevalence and causes of fertilization failure following ICSI • Oocyte activation process
• Diagnostic tools in case of fertilization failure following ICSI • History of Assisted Oocyte Activation (AOA)
• Technical aspects of AOA • Efficiency of AOA
• Safety issues
• Future perspectives
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