New Hope Fertility Center Mexico Plans 20 'Three-Parent' Babies in 2017 Michael Le Page - New Scientist
go to original December 15, 2016

First three-parent baby's impact on fertility methods (CBS This Morning)

Many more three-parent babies will soon be on their way. A clinic in Mexico is planning to use the technique in 20 pregnancies in the first half of 2017, according to its medical director Alejandro Chavez-Badiola.

The first baby to be born using such a technique to prevent passing on genetic disease was born this year. Test results yet to be published have revealed that the baby boy is perfectly healthy, New Scientist has been told.

The idea is that the technique, called mitochondrial replacement, avoids harmful mitochondrial mutations passing from the mother to her children. It works by removing the nucleus from a mother’s egg and inserting it into a donor egg, which has its own nucleus removed. The egg is then fertilised with the father’s sperm.

In this way, an embryo gets chromosomes from its mother and father, but the DNA in the mitochondria comes from the donor. The hope is this should enable children not to inherit harmful mitochondrial mutations from their mothers, but will mean that they have genetic material from three people – the father and two women.

The baby born this year is now 8 months old. To create him, Chavez-Badiola and colleagues at the New Hope Fertility Center Mexico manipulated and implanted the embryo in 2015.

All the tests done so far suggest the treatment has worked and the boy is perfectly healthy. “Based on this mutation load, I don’t think he will have any problems,” says Taosheng Huang of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, who has been doing the genetic analysis for the team. Full details are due to be published in coming weeks, he says.

Read the rest at New Scientist

Related: Britain Agrees to License Three-Parent IVF Babies to Prevent Disease (Reuters)

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