Some concerns have been voiced over the way in which a clinic last year created the first three-parent baby born using a new technique.
The baby’s birth was exclusively revealed by New Scientist in 2016. John Zhang of the New Hope Fertility Center in New York and his team used a form of mitochondrial replacement therapy to help a woman have a baby without passing on a serious genetic disease carried in the DNA of her mitochondria, the compartments that generate energy in our cells.
The method involves placing the DNA from one woman into a donated egg from another, and then fertilising it with sperm. Because the egg contains some mitochondrial DNA from the donor, babies made this way carry genetic material from three different people.
The team has now published an account of this procedure and the resulting baby’s health in a peer-reviewed journal, Reproductive BioMedicine Online. It reveals that, seven months after birth, the boy remains healthy, showing no signs of Leigh syndrome – a condition that killed two of his older siblings.
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