Journal of Andrology. Vol. 20, No. 5, September/October 1999.  Copyright © American Society of Andrology.

Increased In Vitro Binding of Fresh and Frozen-Thawed Human Sperm Exposed to a Synthetic Peptide.

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RUPERT P. AMANN*, ROBERT B. SHABANOWITZ†, GABOR HUSZAR‡, AND STEPHAN J. BRODER§

From *BioPore, Inc., State College, Pennsylvania; †Penn State Geisinger Health System, Danville, PA; ‡Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut; and §California Cryobank, Inc., Los Angeles, CA.

With fresh sperm, relative binding was increased (P < 0.01) by exposure of sperm to peptide, and the effect was especially obvious at 1280 pM. Higher doses were not tested. Collectively at three study sites, exposure of fresh sperm to 1280 pM peptide substantially increased (above 99% confidence interval: on the basis of duplicate control samples) percentage of sperm bound for 25 of 74 (34%) samples.For frozen-thawed sperm, exposure to 1280 pM peptide increased binding for 29 of 65 (45%) samples. We concluded that for >30% of men, exposure of their sperm to this synthetic fragment of prosaposin at 1280 pM increased binding of sperm to an egg membrane substrate similar to that offered by the zona pellucida.

Journal of Andrology. Vol. 20. No. 1. January/February 1999. Copyright © American Society of Andrology.

Exposure of Human, Boar, or Bull Sperm to a Synthetic Peptide Increases Binding to an Egg-Membrane Substrate

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RUPERT P. AMANN*, ROY H. HAMMERSTEDT*, AND ROBERT B. SHABANOWITZ†

From *BioPore, Inc., Stale College, PA; and †Penn State Geisinger Health System, Danville, PA.

For fresh human sperm (25) ejaculates), the percentage of sperm bound was increased by exposure to 640 pM peptide (P < 0,01). For 11 of 25 samples, the percentage of sperm bound for the aliquot exposed to 640 pM peptide was ≥1.4 times the value for a 0 pM control liquor. With frozen-thawed human sperm, for six of seven samples, binding was ≥1.4 times greater after exposure to 640 pM peptide. For boar sperm held for ~24 hours at ~18˚C before use (28 ejaculate), there was a higher percentage of sperm bound for aliquots previously exposed to 1,280 pM peptide than there was for control aliquots (P < 0.01). For 16 of 28 samples, exposure to peptide increased the percentage of sperm bound by ≥1.4 times.