Luisa Ramírez-Agámez

Luisa Ramírez-Agámez

Luisa Ramírez-Agámez, DVM, MS
Embryologist, PhD Student
Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences

Dr. Luisa Ramírez-Agámez is a doctoral student in the Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences (VLCS) at the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS). She received her DVM at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia (National University of Colombia) in 2017.

During the 2017 and 2018 breeding seasons, she was a visiting intern at Pinnacle Equine Veterinary Services, in Whitesboro, Texas. She also spent a year (2019–20) as a visiting intern in the Equine Embryo Laboratory at Texas A&M, under the mentorship of Dr. Katrin Hinrichs. There, she was trained in transvaginal oocyte aspiration, oocyte and embryo manipulation in the mare, and conducted studies on in vitro capacitation of stallion sperm. In 2021, she began her doctoral studies, under Dr. Charles Love, focused on the study of various clinical factors associated with the efficiency of assisted reproductive technologies in the mare, particularly Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI) and in vitro culture of equine embryos. Various of these studies are conducted in collaboration with Dr. Terje Raudsepp, including the validation of alternative methods of preimplantation genetic diagnosis in embryos, and the impact of ICSI and in vitro culture on the genome and transcriptome of equine embryos. In addition to her research duties, she serves as the embryologist for the clinical ICSI service in the theriogenology section of the Large Animal Teaching Hospital (LATH).

Her clinical and research interests are related to assisted reproductive technologies in horses, with an emphasis on transvaginal oocyte aspiration, in vitro oocyte maturation, fertilization, and embryo culture. She also has interests in the application of molecular biology techniques for gametes and embryos, and the relationship of these to clinical equine reproduction.