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July 19, 2024
DHF First in the World to Successfully Freeze Alpaca Embryos!
Presented at The Parade of Champions Auction 2017
By: Kim Gleason, PhD
flushing embryos from donor alpacas
searching for embryos in the lab
in vivo alpaca embryos
freezing the embryos
Working in the field of human embryology for my entire life and freezing literally thousands of eggs and embryos, it was only a matter of time before I decided to try to freeze alpaca embryos. Historically all of the literature recording various attempts at freezing embryos in alpacas had failed, and it was presumed that it was just not possible. I assembled my research team at the time that included Lynn Edens and Arturo Peno and we set up a series of trials breeding females and then flushing resultant embryos from the reproductive tracts. Since it was not known then when would be the optimal timing to recover embryos, we performed embryo flushes on days 6-9 post breeding-at am and then pm time intervals. We discovered that we could find the most embryos by flushing early Day 7-8. We then focused our efforts on recovering embryos on those days. Once we had embryos in our farm laboratory, I was able to freeze them with modern methods called vitrification, store them frozen in our large liquid nitrogen storage vessels, and prepare recipients for thawing and transfer. The very first embryo we froze survived the thaw, was transferred, but unfortunately did not establish a pregnancy. We did, however, succeed in describing methods for recovery of in vivo produced alpaca embryos, for successfully freezing, and for thawing and transfer. I still have embryos frozen and will resume these efforts in the future.
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