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Mitchel C. Schiewe, Ph.D. |
Dr. Schiewe is Laboratory Director at Southern California Centre for Reproductive Medicine (SCCRM) at Newport Beach, CA. He is a Comparative Reproductive Physiologist/Applied Embryologist. |
After years of excellent career in non-human embryology, he got motivated by the the research efforts of J. Cohen, M. Tucker, A. Handyside, D. Gook, ZP Nagy, K. Wiemer and D. Gardner, to extend his expertise in Human Embryology. He joined faculty of OB/GYN at University of California, Irvine (UCI) as an Assistant Professor in 1992. His 3 year research at UCI culminated into 8 peer-reviewed manuscripts, the topics of which ranged from simplified ICSI and oocyte freezing to understanding blastocyst hatching mechanisms and using non-contact IR lasers for assisted hatching. All of these scientific contributions have important clinical implications today.
Upon entering clinical embryology in 1995, he continued to publish and present scientific studies at National and International conferences. He has developed and directed Micromanipulation programs at several US centers and at the SIFT Center in Rome, Italy (1994-2000). He was one of the early originators of ICSI, being responsible for the first ICSI baby born in Mexico/Western USA in February 1994, as well as the first ICSI babies derived from fresh epididymal sperm in Italy (1995), frozen epididymal sperm in the USA (1995) and frozen testicular sperm in Italy (1996). In the mid-1990’s, he extended his clinical/research focus into the handling and IVM/cryopreservation of testicular tissue/sperm, blastocyst culturing and biopsy for preimplantation genetic diagnosis.
Dr. Schiewe tested several vitrification devices only to diagnose various design flaws, technical repeatability, labeling and storage issues. Thus, he innovated his own vitrification system, called microSecure vitrification (mS-VTF; Schiewe & Fahy, 2008). His goal was to create a more effective aseptic closed method that offered Embryologists unparalleled simplicity, security and other quality control advantages as a low cost, FDA compliant cryopreservation method (Schiewe, 2010). Today, mS-VTF has proven to be highly effective for embryos, especially in conjunction to Day 5/6 blastocyst PGS. Furthermore, he has reported similar oocyte cryopreservation success rates claimed by open VTF systems, although he strongly asserts and cautions others that it is still an “experimental procedure”.
Dr. Schiewe has served as an author or co-author on 37 peer-reviewed papers and 92 abstracts. He has served as RBPG/ASRM Program Chairman (2007, 2010) and was a two-time Chairman of RBPG (2008, 2009). During his tenure, he was frustrated by the “Octomom” fiasco and the lack to voice /suppression granted to the RBPG or RLTPG to defend the laboratory position. In turn, Mitch wanted all Reproductive Biologists, independent of degree-status, to have a significant influence on the ASRM Board (i.e., “a voice and vote’”), so before concluding his tenure he founded the SRBT of ASRM with an organization committee of past officers.
Dr. Schiewe is employed at SCCRM/SCIRS in Newport Beach, CA. He has built elite ART Lab properly staffed with a team of amazing Embryologists where he teaches, trains and administers. Drs. Sims & Rothman at the California Cryobank have entrusted his services to develop and run a QC/R&D program as an ambassador to the ART community.