SPARTEVs. Steroid hormones levels produced by cumulus cells in response to seminal extracellular vesicles subsets during in vitro maturation of porcine oocytes

Extracellular vesicles (EVs), defined as membrane-delimited nanoparticles (30-to-1000 nm), have emerged as essential cell-to-cell messengers, modulating several physio and pathological processes. Based on differences in size and biogenesis pathways, EVs released by functional cells are categorized into exosomes (small EVs) and microvesicles (large EVs). These EVs has been isolated from all reproductive fluids, including seminal plasma (SP), a complex fluid secreted mainly from accessory sexual glands that modulates sperm function and female reproductive tract immune environment. In pigs, SP has been found to modulate the ovary function, in terms of hormone secretion. This study investigated the effect of two seminal EVs subsets (small (S-EVs) and large (L-EVs) on cumulus cells during in vitro maturation (IVM) of porcine cumulus-cell-complexes COCs), in terms of steroid synthesis. This dataset contains the raw data of steroid hormones (progesterone and estradiol-17β) levels assessed in the IVM spent media when porcine COCs were IVM in presence of both seminal EVs-subsets at different concentrations (Low: 0.1 mg/mL; High: 0.2 mg/mL; as total protein concentration). The steroid hormones were assessed after 22 h and 44 h of IVM in the IVM spent media by radioimmunoassay.