Historical Note: Lessons Learned from Developing the First Semi-Defined Medium for Culture of One-Cell Rabbit Embryos to Expanding Blastocysts

Abstract

In a review written in 1987 entitled “Pioneering mammalian embryo culture,” John Biggers (The mammalian preimplantation embryo: regulation of growth and differentiation in vitro, Plenum Press, New York, 1987) summarized the history of early preimplantation embryo culture as follows “The culture of early mammalian embryos has been studied predominantly in two species: the rabbit and the mouse. Up to 1949, the rabbit was used almost exclusively, with media composed of ill-defined biological fluids. After this time, techniques for the culture of preimplantation mouse embryos rapidly developed using simple, defined media with relatively few components… In the 1960s, there was renewed interest in the culture of early rabbit embryos and a marked difference in the nutritional requirements of the two species was found.” This chapter describes the history of the development of the semi-defined medium that stimulated this “renewed interest” referred to above and includes some of the initial difficulties in getting the work published. The phrase “semi-defined medium” is understood here to mean a defined medium (all of whose components are chemically known) supplemented with an undefined component such as albumin.