Cryopreservation of reproductive material

Ensuring good safety conditions during reintroduction

The cells maintained by the National Cryobank must maintain a high level of reproductive efficiency in order to reintroduce and stabilize the donor's genomes in the host population. An important issue also concerns the acceleration of whole genome reconstitution, which raises questions about the use of regeneration technology.
Maintaining the reproductive potential of the stored cells is a first critical point. The second key point is that the genetic, epigenetic and phenotypic conformity of the donor animal to be found in its offspring, from the cryopreserved cells. Finally, the optimal bio-safety of the methods developed to conserve the cells is the third nodal point of cryobanking.

Our technological development objectives focus on

1) Improve and standardize processing and freeze/thaw procedures for the cryopreservation of different cell types.
2) Better evaluate their reproductive potential after thawing and explore corresponding regeneration methods (fertilization, transplantation, reprogramming including induced stem cells) when these are not efficient enough.
3) Evaluate the integrity of the epigenome.
The whole process developed to secure the biotechnology of cell storage includes tasks on the substitution of protective molecules of animal origin by synthetic/chemical media (Pillet et al., 2011) as well as optimized storage conditions to avoid contamination.
Each experimental protocol is submitted for approval to ethics committees in accordance with the rules in force.
Societal issues may also be discussed within the Stakeholders Committee and the Scientific Committee of CRB-Anim before developing new procedures on embryos and somatic cells. Developments will be undertaken by the partners INRA and VetAgro Sup in collaboration with IFREMER, SYSAAF and INSERM (AgrobioStem) depending on the species and cell type.