Cheetah Conservation Fund

Category: Cheetah - Research | Date: Sep 29 2007 | By: admin

This month we announced the first ever in vitro cheetah embryos that have developed to the blastocyst stage. The embryos have been produced at the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution and the University of California, Davis, USA.

The oocytes (eggs) were recovered from some of CCF’s captive cheetahs, and inseminated with sperm in vitro (in the lab). During this procedure new culture systems were implemented to optimize embryo development. Embryos were assessed and the first ever cheetah embryos to reach the blastocyst stage was frozen for storage in the Cheetah Conservation Fund’s Genome Resource Bank, a reservoir of frozen genetic and biological materials. The oocytes (eggs) used to produce these historical embryos were collected from Nestlé and Hershey –two of CCF’s resident non-releasable cheetahs, of which four blastocysts were frozen. What makes this even more exciting is that the sperm used were collected over a year ago from a CCF’s resident male, Cruise, and had been frozen and stored in the Genome Resource Bank. This proves that the techniques researched at CCF to freeze and thaw cheetah sperm are viable.

Last year another major breakthrough was made when the timing of aspiration (collection) of oocytes was established at 28 to 30 hours post hormone treatment. Building on what was discovered last year, scientists were able to take this research to the next level with the help of the captive cheetahs living at CCF, as a large enough sample size was needed in order to test different incubation conditions needed by embryos to develop successfully. All these methods have been established using domestic cats as models, but need to be adapted for each wild carnivore species.

While in vitro fertilisation is relatively routine in many other species, including humans, carnivores have proven to be a challenge when it comes to assisted reproduction and pioneering methodologies need to be developed. In order to successfully grow cheetah embryos in vitro, the correct temperature, CO2 and growth mediums needed to be established that are very specific to cheetah embryos.