Cell-free DNA discoveries in human reproductive medicine: providing a new tool for biomarker and genetic assays in ART

Cell-free DNAs (cfDNAs) are fragmented forms of DNA that are released into extracellular environments. Analyzing them, regarding either concentration or genetic/epigenetic status can provide helpful information about disorders, response to treatments, estimation of success rates, etc. Moreover, since they are presented in body fluids, evaluation of the aforementioned items would be achieved by less/non-invasive methods. In human reproduction field, it is required to have biomarkers for prediction of assisted reproduction techniques (ART) outcome, as well as some non-invasive procedures for genetic/epigenetic assessments. cfDNA is an appropriate candidate for providing the both approaches in ART. Recently, scientists attempted to investigate its application in distinct fields of reproductive medicine that resulted in discovering its applicability for biomarker and genetic/epigenetic analyses. However, due to some limitations, it has not reached to clinical administration yet. In this article, we have reviewed the current reported data with respect to advantages and limitations of cfDNA utilization in three fields of ART, reproduction of male and female, as well as in vitro developed embryos.