CryoStore at NMBU - Paulina Pyrek
PhD 2 - Validation of improved protocols for bovine oocyte/ovarian tissue cryopreservation
My name is Paulina Pyrek, and I’m from Poland. I studied at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences, where I graduated as a veterinarian in 2020. Since 4th year of my studies, I developed a keen interest in cattle, sheep, and goats, both in research and clinic aspects. I was attending few students’ conferences as a speaker with topics concerning calves’ gastrointestinal disorders, internal parasites of domestic and wild animals, and cryopreservation of European bison’s semen. From January to May 2019, I participated in research conducted at the Department of Reproduction with Farm Animal Clinic, as a part of the "Comprehensive European bison protection project by the State Forests". The focus of the project was on assisted reproductive techniques and the possible establishment of a gamete bank. During this project, I evaluated sperm quality by subjective microscopic evaluation, Computer Assisted Sperm Analysis (CASA) and flow cytometry, before and after slow-freezing cryopreservation, to assess sperm cryodamage and the usefulness of Percoll® gradient.
After graduation, I was working as a research assistant at My Alma Mater, in the Department of Internal Medicine with Clinic of Horses, Dogs and Cats. During that time, I was involved in teaching, clinical and research activities. Throughout the course of my career, I have written a few articles for national and foreign journals, mostly on cattle health. My latest research interest was bovine papillomaviruses in dairy cattle, where I gained experience in laboratory work by providing DNA isolation, PCR, RCA reactions and electrophoresis. After three years of work in Poland, I moved to Norway. Just before becoming a PhD student in CryoStore project, I was working as a veterinarian at the Ambulatory Clinic at the Section for Herd Health Services at Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU).
Currently, I am a PhD student at the Department of Production Animal Clinical Sciences at NMBU - Faculty of Veterinary Medicine supervised by Anette Kristine Krogenæs, Amin Sayyari and Jaana Peippo for the CryoStore project. The aim of my thesis is to validate the protocols for bovine oocytes and ovarian tissue cryopreservation. This area of science requires exploration and improvement, as current cryopreservation methods are not very efficient. Slow-freezing of female gametes results in poor viability of oocytes and only small percentage of fertilized cells that can form blastocyst. Vitrification is a more promising direction, but there are still some knowledge gaps that need to be filled, especially in cattle. Improvements of known vitrification protocols regarding cryoprotectant solutions and combinations, as well as cryodamage of the cells on morphology and genetic level, will be studied during this project.