Hitting the wall: Human sperm velocity recovery under ultra-confined conditions

M. A. BETTERA MARCAT; M. N. GALLEA; G L. MIÑO; M. A. CUBILLA; A. J. BANCHIO; L. C. GIOJALAS; V. I. MARCONI; H. A. GUIDOBALDI

BIOMICROFLUIDICS

AMER INST PHYSICS

Lugar: American Institute of Physics; Año: 2020 vol. 14 p. 24108 - 24108

1932-1058

Infertility is a common medical condition encountered by public health systems throughout the world. Despite the development of complex in vitro fertilization techniques, only one third of these procedures are successful. New lab-on-a-chip systems focused on spermatozoa selection needs a better understanding of sperm behaviour under ultra-confined conditions. Experimental studies combined with computational simulation models will allow us to evaluate the efficiency of different lab-on-a-chip devices during the design process. In this work, we provide experimental evidence of the dynamics of sperm interacting with a wall. We observed a decrease in average sperm velocity during initial wall interaction and a partial recover after alignment. In order to describe this phenomenon, we propose a simple model for the sperm alignment process with a single free parameter. By using experimental motility characterization into the model, we achieve an accurate description of the average velocity behaviour of the sperm population.