In the United Kingdom, the first baby created with DNA from three people has been born (three-parent babies) after doctors performed an IVF procedure that aims to prevent children from inheriting incurable diseases.
Key points
- The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the UK fertility regulator, confirmed that fewer than five UK children had been born using the procedure as of April 2023.
- The technique, known as mitochondrial donation treatment (MDT), uses tissue from the eggs of healthy female donors to create IVF embryos that are free from harmful mutations their mothers carry and are likely to pass on to their children.
- Mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT) is intended to prevent the inheritance of serious health conditions caused by mutations to mitochondria, cells’ energy-producing organelles; such mutations often affect the heart, brain and muscles.
- The procedure — sometimes called three-person in vitro fertilization (IVF) — involves moving nuclear genetic material from an egg or single-cell embryo with disease-causing mitochondria to a donor egg or embryo that has had its nuclear genetic material removed.
- Because the embryos combine sperm and egg from the biological parents with tiny battery-like structures called mitochondria from the donor’s egg, the resulting baby has DNA from the mother and father as usual, plus a small amount of genetic material – about 37 genes – from the donor.
- The work aimed to help women with mutated mitochondria to have babies without the risk of passing on genetic disorders.
- People inherit all their mitochondria from their mother, so harmful mutations in the “batteries” can affect all of the children a woman has.
