Healthy Male Individuals Possess Higher Plasma HER-2 Level than Females

Considering HER2 as one of the well-known biomarkers in the cancer field, and published articles regarding serumlevels of HER2, in this paper we tried to highlight the issue that most studies don’t stratify the HER-2 concentrationof individuals in terms of gender. In this brief survey, healthy individuals with no prior non-communicable diseaseswere categorized as males (n=34) and females (n=43), and all samples were evaluated for plasma HER-2 levelsat once. Surprisingly, the plasma level of HER-2 of healthy male individuals (mean= 2.28 ± 0.21 ng/mL) wassignificantly (P<0.0001) higher than the plasma level of HER-2 of healthy females (mean: 0.06 ± 0.09 ng/mL),with no overlap. Therefore, we suggest that more studies are required to re-check the cutoff values for HER-2plasma levels based on gender since the clinical implications of a unique HER-2 cutoff for both genders may beseriously concerning

Enhancing developmental rate and quality of mouse single blastomeres into blastocysts using a microplatform

The present work reports the beneficial effects of using a microplatform on the development of mouse single blastomeres (SBs) to the blastocyst stage. Development of blastocysts from SBs separated from two‐ and four‐cell stage embryos (two‐ and four‐cell SBs) can provide a valuable supply both for couples who use fertility‐assisted techniques and farm animals. As a step forward, we introduce three chips that provide the possibility of culturing SBs separately, in groups, and in the vicinity of the intact embryo (co‐culture), while each well of the chips is assigned to an isolated SB. Two‐ and four‐cell SBs co‐cultured with intact embryos showed 97.1% and 76.6% developmental rates and up to 34.1% and 49.1% growth relative to the microdroplet method (control). We examined the quality of developed blastocysts by assessing the total cell number, the number of inner cell mass (ICM) according to the octamer‐binding transcription factor 4 marker (OCT4), and trophectoderm (TE). Co‐culture of SBs with an intact embryo in a chip with nanoscale culture medium volume also increased the cell population of the developed embryo. The ICM:TE ratio, which is the most important blastocyst quality parameter, also indicated that developed two‐cell SBs have a higher degree of similarity to intact embryos despite fewer numbers of total cells