Institute of Life (IOL) in Athens, a leading Greek IVF clinic, has produced the first ‘three parent baby’; a healthy boy weighing nearly 3 kilos.
The procedure used by the Institute of Life team, developed at the company Embryotools in Spain, is called ‘maternal spindle transfer. It involves the use of an egg from the mother, sperm from the father, and another egg from a donor female.
The method was developed to help women affected by genetic diseases that are passed down from mother to child, and doctors believe it could also be used to increase the odds of successful fertilisation. In this particular case the mother, 32, was a Greek woman with a history of multiple IVF failures.
IOL president, Dr. Pangiotis Psathas said, “As Greek scientists we are proud to announce an international innovation in assisted reproduction, and we are now in a position to make it possible for women with multiple IVF failures, or rare mitochondrial genetic diseases to have a healthy child.”
At Embryotools, co-Founder Dr. Nunos Borges added: “The successful and safe implementation of the maternal spindle transfer method, for the first time in history, is a revolution is assisted reproduction.”
How does it work?
Mitochondria are tiny packets in cells responsible for converting food into chemical energy, they have also been implicated in regulating female reproductive processes. In mitochondrial disease in the mother they are defective, so it makes sense to replace them with healthy donor mitochondria in the egg used for IVF.
The Greek mother in this case had undergone 4 unsuccessful cycles of IVF before undergoing the maternal spindle transfer method, and her new baby son now has a small amount of genetic material from the donor as well as his mother in his genetic makeup.
Dr Borges believes his new technology will help countless women to realise their dream of becoming mothers with their own genetic material. A verification trial is now underway with a further 24 women, with 8 hybrid embryos now ready for implantation.
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