Many believe that using plastic dishes suitable for cell culture grade is suitable for IVF. However, this is not the case. You will experience a huge difference in embryo development and using non- IVF approved plastics will negatively affect your blastocyst rates. It is a very common mistake that I often encounter, people mistaking cell grade dishes to be the same as IVF grade dishes.
It is important that as many of your plastic disposables are IVF grade, and the difference is IVF grade has been mouse embryo assay (MEA) tested. In a MEA test 1-cell mouse embryos are cultured to blastocyst stage and a minimum blastocyst rate of 80% is required to pass.
In human assisted reproduction it is a legal requirement that all products must pass a MEA test as quality control release parameter.
Plastic can have a toxic effect on your embryos Do therefore never aliquot media or oil into plastic tubes or vials, neither for short term equilibration nor longer term storage. Media will be compromised after only a few hours. Furthermore, plastic stored in the incubator will emit toxic compounds and create a toxic environment in the incubator.
In our laboratory we have tested many different plastics during maturation, fertilization and culture.