Diagnosing Male Infertility with a Mechanical Engineering Twist
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The World Health Organization estimates that infertility impacts one in six adults globally. But when it comes to addressing infertility, male partners are often left out of the equation. Some studies suggest that in 18 to 27 percent of cases where a heterosexual couple seeks medical help for fertility issues, doctors won't bother to run any tests on the man. Those stats might make you think male fertility issues are rare, but that's definitely not the case.

According to some estimates, male fertility issues are the sole cause of infertility in some 20% of cases and contribute to the problem in another 30 to 40% of cases. In other words, if a couple is having trouble conceiving, there's about a 50/50 chance that sperm-related issues are a factor.

Perhaps because of the stigma around talking about and testing for male infertility, there hasn't been much innovation in those diagnostics. That's starting to change, with at-home testing options popping up to offer privacy and convenience. But today's guest is pushing the envelope even further. He's the co-author of a recent study that suggests folks could test some aspects of sperm health right at home, without even sending their samples off to a lab.

Shashanta Mitra is a professor of mechanical and mechatronics engineering at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Thank you so much for coming on to chat with us today. It's a pleasure. So let's start with a pretty basic question. Why is it important to be able to test sperm health and what are the hurdles that are in our way right now? It's a very good question. So if you look at the very area of male fertility, there's quite a bit of a social stigma associated with it.

in terms of having a way to access lab, do regular testing and so forth.

So our idea here is to really bring these kind of tests at home so that one can do these tests at their own leisure and then can really monitor the health of the sperms. Yeah. Well, I know that there are some at-home sperm tests, but what would you say the issues are there that your research was trying to solve? Yeah. So what we are trying to do is really empowering individuals with their

you know, at home test, which is quite very accurate. It will be at a very low cost and it is looking at a very different paradigm. So most of the tests in the lab or in elsewhere is all based on understanding the sperm motility through microscopy based technique.

In our case, it is a completely different way. It is looking at a very different physical parameter, which is the adhesion measurement of a sperm leaden droplet

in contact with a given surface. And how did this research get started? You know, you mentioned you're part of a school of engineering. So my group has been working on understanding adhesion of various droplets on surfaces. So we developed a technique of doing this via cantilever-based technology, which allowed us to

do this in a very universal, systematic way so that if you bring a cantilever in a close contact with the surface, then automatically it will help us to understand what is the adhesion of that drop with that substrate. So based on those understanding and also understanding of how

living matter like bacteria, viruses and so forth. We worked during the COVID time as well, understanding how bacteria interacts with surfaces for antibacterial, antiviral coatings. So all of this knowledge then started building in our group. And then I happened to have an excellent collaborator in the system designs engineering, Professor Veronica McDaniels,

So she is expert in terms of sperm motion and so forth. So when she brought this problem to my group, then we thought, OK, we developed a tool of understanding adhesion of drops on the surface

what happens when we have this drop full of sperm cells? And I think that very question started this curiosity-driven research that at the end helped us to address a very important global health problem. Right. So you're essentially looking at how well different droplets stick to surfaces. Is that correct? Correct.

And what were you able to correlate that with in sperm? So in sperm, it is really the motility. So for example, if you think about if the sperm cells are very viable, motile, then

When you have a drop and in contact with that substrate, it will try to move away from the substrate. So in other words, highly motile or healthy sperm will have less adhesion. So that counterintuitive kind of a signature of adhesion help us to create this kind of a tool for sperm quality. So what would this look like in a home test?

A male individual can regularly collect this semen sample and then put it inside this so-called what we envision as a black box, which will actually then give gradation of good

medium quality, high quality and so forth. So the other addressing part here is what we want to ensure, like there are a lot of challenges which has been documented in terms of the quality of sperm with respect to the lifestyle choices. For example, if an individual is smoking or if an individual has a sedentary life, then the quality of the sperm decreases.

So by looking at this kind of testing, an individual can make proactive lifestyle choices and make themselves more active or quit smoking when they plan to have their family and so forth. So I think this can be a very important tool towards, you know, addressing challenges related to reproduction, you know.

system as well. Yeah. So what are your next steps? You know, what questions do you still have to answer? Well, the next step is to really try to miniaturize the system, right? And make it in, as I was mentioning, a black box, so to speak, so that it can be readily deployed at places, for example, at home and so forth. So I think that kind of a translation power

in terms of developing, if you will, a prototype or minimum viable product

which would be a next step towards commercialization. - And how quickly do you think this research could make it into a commercial product? - It's all about money, you know? If we get enough resources, funding, then of course we can accelerate. We have the right people, right tool, right researchers, collaborators to help us move this forward. And of course we are actively seeking in terms of grant funding to make this happen.

I think it's also very critical to understand the importance of interdisciplinary research. I'm coming from a mechanical engineering background with very different skill sets and my collaborator, Professor Veronica Mcdenis is coming from system designs engineering with different sets of skill set. When you have these kinds of complementary skill sets coming together,

And learning from each other, I think that's the joy of this kind of interdisciplinary research. One can really create this kind of innovative breakthroughs. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on to chat today and looking forward to seeing your work progress. Thank you. Thanks for this opportunity. That's all for today's episode. We'll be back on Friday to find out what exactly it takes for human beings to flourish.

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Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Wongi, Kelto Harper, Naima Marci, and Jeff DelVecchio. This episode was edited by Alex Zaghiara. Shaina Poses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news. For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. See you next time. ♪